Best planned lays

Sep

2024

Ready…Set…Wait….

That’s the current mood on our house. Ready…set…wait…wait…wait… We’re almost entirely ready for Necronomicon. We just need to pack. But there’s a blob that’s soon to be named Helene in the Caribbean right now. She’s heading for the Gulf of Mexico at the moment, and she may ALSO be heading for Tampa this week.

Driving into what projections say might be a Category 2 hurricane doesn’t seem like my idea of a good time. Hence, the “wait” part of the program. Right now, IF she comes to Tampa or the area just north, it looks like it will be Thursday. But we will see, and then we will decide.

Welcome to Florida in the Fall.

If there is a convention and we attend, then we’ll have a great time. I have five panels — two on Friday night and three on Saturday.

Friday, 9PM — Guess the Spec Fic Author By Their Sex Scene (Mystery Science Sex Scene 3K)
Friday, 10PM — I Want to Verb Your Noun (the annual Writing Sex panel returns!)
Saturday, 10AM — Author Quarters 2 (Reading from something non-spicy)
Saturday, 5PM — Gardening vs. Building (Pantsing and Plotting)
Saturday, 8PM — Cosmic Construction (Worldbuilding)

In addition, I have a table in Author Alley. Remember that if you tell me you’re a newsletter subscriber or follow me on social media, you get discounts! In addition, I’ll be running a Necro sale — 25% off everything except digital items and book bundles.

If things end up being wet and squally and we stay home, then I’ll run a Necro sale on signed books through my website, and I’ll put things up on sale on Smashwords (easiest place to put up a coupon.)

So… ready…set…wait…wait…wait….

Work in Progress

Tales from the Arena: King of Swords
(Tales from the Arena, book 3)

68776 / 120000 (57.31%)

Promotions

This may very well be the last week where Counsel of the Wicked is on sale. There are only three books left in my SPFBO cohort, and mine is one of them. I’ve seen the other semi-finalists, and I’m really not sure I’ll be joining them, so I think I’ll be out shortly. If you want to grab it while it is still on sale, now is the time!

Coming up on October 11th, I have Chains of Light available for free in So Queer To My Heart, a spicy queer romance event. Link to the event page will be coming soon.

I’ll be participating in a Stuff Your Kindle event from October 18-20th. There are over 400 books that will be free or discounted for that weekend, and I’ll have Written in Water up for free!

I’m also going to be a part of Enchanted Realms, and this promotion runs for the entire month of October — sign up for newsletters, get free books and enter to win a $30 gift card!

Appearances

Necronomicon
September 27-29th, 2024
Tampa, Florida

***

Not So Spooky Hallowfest
October 6th, 2024
Deltona, Florida

***

Wizards, Witches and the Weird
October 27th, 2024
Daytona Beach, Florida

***

Maker Faire Orlando
November 9-10th
Orlando, Florida

Oct

2023

Closing In On The End.

Here we are, closing in on the end of 2023. Halloween is tomorrow, and then we get into November and the slow slide toward a new year. Yesterday, I hit the halfway point on Balance of Power, which means I’m well on my way to finishing the book by December, just in time for Cookiepocalypse. Planning for 2024 has started (slowly, but it has started), and I’m looking forward to closing the book on 2023.

It’s been a good year. A weird year, but a good one. I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve come to a lot of realizations that will change how I work going forward. What, you ask? Well, working multiple projects at a time isn’t something sustainable for me anymore, to start with. I have to focus on one thing at a time in each category — planning, researching, writing and editing. If I try to do more than one in each category, then none of the others get done. Time to adjust so I can accomplish more by doing less.

I forget if I let you all know that Written in Water didn’t make the finals for SPFBO. It had a fabulous review, though. You can see the finalists here, and there’s still one more to come (by tomorrow, I think!)

So what’s in the cards for 2024? Keeping in mind that things are still in the squidgy, warm Jello stages of planning, 2024 holds at least one convention (possibly three — I applied to present at ICFA, and I’m in the waiting list for a convention that I’ve never done before), more events with the Cavalcade, at least one but possibly two books from Riverdale Avenue Books (Morrigan’s Heir is still on the roster for this year, but they have Bonds of Blood and Steel, and I will be sending them Morrigan’s Wrath once I finish the Heir edits.) There will be at least one self-published book — that would be Balance of Power, and getting research done for Imaginative Anthropology and for the worldbuilding for Iron and Silk.

So, if I keep with the categories, here’s my 2024 starting lineup.

Planning:
- ???? (at the moment, I have a pile of story outlines ready to go. So this with either stay empty for a bit, or just be business planning.)
Research
- Imaginative Anthropology
  - Iron and Silk research when done
Writing
- The Sea Prince
  - ???? when done (Either Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand or Tower of Light.)
Editing
- Balance of Power
  - Either The Sea Prince or whatever comes back first from RAB.

I’m looking at perhaps a March or April publishing date for Balance of Power, but that will depend on several factors (how long edits take, how long cover creation takes, and what other books I have releasing and when.)

On a personal level, someone who lives in my house and is taller than I am now graduates in the spring of 2024, and starts college in the fall. All the applications are in, applications for scholarships have started, and we do the financial aid paperwork in December. Then we wait…

Oh, and there’s a two-years-postponed vacation in there somewhere. I really can’t wait for that!

Works in Progress

Balance of Power
Heir to the Firstborn, Book 7

47097 / 90000 (52.33%)

The Sea Prince
The Coral Throne, Book 1

63623 / 120000 (53.02%)

Promotions!

First in Series Friday is Coming! Friday, November 24th (Black Friday in the US), the first books in Heir to the Firstborn, Rebel Mage, and Swords of Charlemagne will be on sale everywhere for 99 cents.

Jul

2023

Hinges

I’m writing this up on July 3rd, so we’re just past the hinge of the year, heading on toward the end. Time to reflect on what worked for the first half of the year, and plan for the rest of the year…

Yeah, I don’t really do that. It sure sounds good, though.

I do like the concept of the hinge, though. The hinge is where your direction changes. It’s where your potential changes. Things that were previously closed can now be opened. I talk a lot about pranayama breathing — specifically, box breathing or four-sided breathing. That’s where you breathe in for a set count (for beginners, you can start with a four count.) You hold it for four, then breathe out for hour. Hold it for four and repeat. It’s fantastic for helping center and quiet anxiety, and for increasing focus, but the pause at the top of the breath is where potential lies. It’s where tension builds up for the release.

It’s the hinge.

Hinges also factor into storytelling. If you’re writing three-act structure, you have a couple of hinges where your direction changes. But if you’re writing to a climax (stop laughing…), then the hinge is the midpoint and where you start to bring the story home. It’s where the tension releases and you start the slow descent off the mountain to the conclusion. You might have other, smaller hinges along the way — foothills are a thing, after all — but your major momentum is starting to release.

If you don’t like the mountain analogy, you can think roller coasters. I’m not particularly a fan of roller coasters, but it’s fun to watch them.

We’re starting to release toward the end of the year now. Yes, it’s still 90 million degrees out, and tomorrow there will be fireworks, we’re past the hinge of the year. Time to start thinking about bringing it home.

I’ve laid out my kanban board for the next quarter — I’m going to finish Broken Feathers (hopefully this week), and keep on researching for Imaginative Anthropology. I’ll be starting back with The Sea Prince in August, and D, the person with whom I originally wrote the first few chapters, is back on board to finish it! We’re going over the first thirteen chapters now. I have one or two pure business things to work on, and in three months, I’ll revisit and see where we are on the path of bringing 2023 to a close.

Right now? We’re about halfway.

SALES: My entire catalog is on sale at Smashwords for their annual sale, running July 1 through July 31. Because of Draft2Digital acquiring Smashwords, I have two catalog pages (that I’m assured with be merged later this year.) So you can find some of my books here, and the rest here.

Jun

2023

A World of Blurry Dilation, 2023 edition

(I used this title last year when I had my annual eye doctor appointment)

I had an eye doctor appointment this morning, and they dilated both eyes. This was at 8:30AM. It’s now 2:30PM and I can almost see. Almost.

Days like this tend to put me off my routine, which leaves me feeling off balance. I’m set in my ways, durn it. Exercising at the end of the day feels weird. But there’s not much to be done over it. First thing appointments are necessary when I’m not going to be able to see to drive myself home.

I’ve been working on Broken Feathers over the past week, and it’s been slow because I’ve been distracted. Remember last week, I mentioned going back to look at the old game posts? Over the past week, I went back and took a look at the first novels I wrote. The ones that I trunked because they were took darned much work to revise and my co-author on them didn’t have the spoons to work on them with me. (Same co-author as The Sea Prince, for the record.) I reached out to her and said “I’m thinking of tackling revisions on our boys once I finish The Sea Prince. How do you want me to handle this?”

Her response was “I’m in. When do we start?”

(A couple of you know which manuscripts I’m talking about, and I can hear you squeeing.)

Right now, the plan is to finish The Sea Prince, then get into revising the first two novels (which were one novel, and we split them. We may put them back together again. We’ll see.) So for right now, my work has been putting all the notes into a shared file, so that we can work on it together. And trying to keep myself from going in and rereading what we had because if I do that, I’m going to want to work on that first.

Patience… patience….

I did print out the synopses of the books we hadn’t written yet (or started), so I can start a series bible. Which totally won’t backfire and make me want to work on it now, nopenopenope….

Patience….

But, first things first. Finish the short story. Really. Finish it. Stop looking at the shiny thing. Leave it. LEAVE IT.

Mar

2023

The Space Where Fandom and Academia Collide…

That space is the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA), an annual conference put on by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. I’ve been attending since their first October conference in 2021, and it is seriously where academia and fandom collide. Four days of panels and readings and talking and networking and realizing you’re sitting right across from a writing LEGEND and trying not to die (okay, maybe that one is just me…)

I started going to conventions at 16, and I started with Lunacon, which was the New York regional convention. And I remember panels where experts spoke at length about different aspects of fandom and meaning and symbolism, and the panels at ICFA remind me of being at that sort of convention. I’m not sure how many of those are left — the old regionals seem to be passing to younger hands, and becoming more media focused. Which just shows that I’m part of the graying of fandom, I suppose.

No, I am not shaking my fist at clouds.

I was nominally supposed to also be on a writing retreat while at ICFA. Ah… that did not go as planned.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven duology, Book 2)

54813 / 90000 (60.90%)

I didn’t get nearly as much writing done as I’d have liked. Which means it’s time to turn up the daily wordcount target if I intend to have this done by the end of the school year.

And since I’ve been playing catch-up all day, that means I need to get started on daily words. Here’s hoping for many more words this week!

Apr

2022

Mondayist Monday that ever Mondayed

Today started with the disappointing news that, because of reasons beyond anyone’s control, production on the Hidden Things audiobook has to be canceled, and the contract dissolved. It’s not anyone’s fault, and everyone is very disappointed. Back to square one, I suppose. Although I think I’m going to have a hard time picking a new narrator — Mark’s voices were just so absolutely perfect.

Mark and I are hoping that we will be able to work together again in the future. So here’s to that hope, — maybe with Heir to the Firstborn or The Sea Prince. We’ll see what happens once those two are done.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

131341 / 170000 (77.26%)

****

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, book 1)

31308 / 120000 (26.09%)

I may be putting The Sea Prince to the side for the next month — school is out one month from today, and I really want to have The Way Home complete by then. Or I can use it as a carrot — if I get my words in for The Way Home, I’ll get to go make some words for The Sea Prince. We’ll see which works better.

So… for now, I’m going to keep working on The Way Home, getting that finished so that edits can start and we can get the series wrapped up for a November release. I’ll revisit the Hidden Things audio in the fall, once there’s some distance and I’m not hearing the voices that we set up already. I was planning on working on some non-fiction for the summer anyway, so I may just take a total fiction break and pick up The Sea Prince in the fall, too. I think I might need a break. We’ll see.

Dec

2021

C is for Cookie. That’s Good Enough for Me!

Cookiepocalypse 2021 is done, and because my website is being a bit strange today (to go with everything else!) I can’t load the pictures to show you. But I can link to the Instagram hashtag, so you can see all the cookies in their carby goodness!

Writing also happened last week, in and around cookies. I’m now just about at the halfway mark for Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home, and it’s coming along nicely.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

72587 / 150000 (48.39%)

Tomorrow is the day that Table of Stone goes wide — it’s out of KU already, but I give it a day to make sure that Amazon doesn’t get grumpy at me because I had the temerity to put something that’s coming out of KY up before they release it. Not all the bookstores are up in that link yet, but the book will be in ALL the bookstores. Which reminds me — I need to add it to Eden Books.

And it’s either a good thing or a bad thing that there were so many cookies in the house, because last week, in the midst of baking, I made the very difficult decision to walk away from the Romance Writers of America.

No, I’m not talking about it. I’m still processing. I probably will be for a while. But I know that the work I started will go on — I’ve passed all my notes, and all my contacts on, and I’ll be sitting down with my replacement tomorrow. The Romance Education Initiative will go on, so there’s some comfort in that.

But 2022 is going to be an interesting year.

I may not blog next week. We’ll see. If I don’t, then I wish you all the happiest of New Years.

Oct

2021

New Beginnings Lead to New Endings.

This is it. I’m starting the last book in the Heir to the Firstborn series this week. I finished my first read-through of Heir to the Firstborn: The Crossroads (and discovered a couple of places where a Scrivener crash led to changes that I made not making it to the final document! Eek!) The manuscript is now in the hands of Darling Editor, and I’m starting Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home either later today or tomorrow.

It’s a little weird. I’ve been writing this series now for three years, posting it on Patreon one chapter at a time. It’ll probably be four years of writing by the time it wraps.

And then what?

Well, I’ll have six books and a short story to show for it. Two award nominations and one win. I’ve learned a lot. Grown a lot, both as a person and as a writer. Have I changed so much? Not sure, but I’m in the inside. I don’t know if I’d see it.

So where do I go from here?

Might be a little premature to ask that question. I haven’t written the book yet! But once it’s done, and in edits, then I get to decide what I want to do next. Do I keep the Patreon? What do I put there once Heir to the Firstborn is done? I have a couple of options there, I think. At least three projects that would lend themselves to the New Adult model I’ve already established on Patreon (If you’re keeping score, those possible projects are The Willow Sword, The Iron Virgin, and The Mentalist’s Cat.)

Things are currently in a holding pattern with other writing. The things that are out in slush piles remain in slush piles, and I’m waiting… which, in the traditional publishing model, is a lot of what you do. You write… and you wait.

That’s what I do. I write, and wait for things.

(I might need to put that on a shirt…)

The things I’m waiting for?

- The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir
- The Ice Raven
- John Zebedee and the Heir to the Elvenlands
- John Zebedee and the Monstrous Town
- John Zebedee Meets the Witch Queen of the Elvenlands
- Blood Bound (Flesh and Blood, book 1)
- Bonds of Blood and Steel

And that’s not even counting Sapphires and Gold, which has been under contract for a while, but things happened and more things got delayed.

Meanwhile, I keep writing. Because that’s what I do.

Sep

2021

Down Time and Catching Up.

I’m taking a week or two to rest my brain before launching into Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home. I actually haven’t even started on the edits for Crossroads yet — I figured I’d work on them at the table at Necronomicon, and shoot to have them done by mid-October. Which means that the on sale date for Crossroads will probably be December. Once I have that set, I’ll announce it.

I realized just now that I’ve been sitting on the cover for Crossroads, too.

Choices must be made. But choices have consequences.

Part of my brain break has been laying the groundwork for what I’ll be doing after I finish The Way Home (or while I’m working on it, depending on things.) I’ve written a synopsis for Blood Brothers (Flesh and Blood book 2), The Iron Virgin (that Pirate and Princess thing), and I’m working on the synopsis for Tower of Light (the gay steampunk retelling of Metropolis that I was challenged to write years ago by one of the best editors I ever had). I’m hoping to get the rest of the Flesh and Blood synopses done before Necro, but Tower of Light is going slowly — I’m having to be very conscious of matching the beats of Metropolis. So I may save Tower of Light to actually write until I have nothing else going on.

Stop laughing.

I’m also still working on RWA things. Pen to Paper is running, and my team is working on incorporating our development tester feedback into upcoming units. I’m tech support on call for our participants, and having a great time with that. I’m also working on another couple of projects that are still in the warm Jell-O stages, and won’t be solidified until after our first Board meeting, which will be… soon? Ish? I don’t have a date for that yet. So there is a lot in flux in that area.

Coming up on the end of third quarter also means starting to look at what I’ll be doing and publishing in 2022. Right now, I know for certain that I’ll be wrapping up Heir to the Firstborn, releasing a box set of the Swords of Charlemagne books (February 1st, 2022!), and I will be rereleasing the Rebel Mage books — I have all new covers for them. I haven’t set up a schedule yet for most things yet, but I will next quarter. I need to decide if I will be doing a box set for the Heir to the Firstborn books, but I’m not going to decide on that until I finish The Way Home. If I do put one out, it will be late 2022. That’s the publishing that I have control over. I’m waiting to hear what’s happening with John Zebedee (it appears that the project may have been pushed back, but no official word yet), and with the myriad of things over with Riverdale Avenue Books.

And that’s about it for this week. Back to work!

Aug

2021

Best Laid Plans…

So I was planning on having a finished book before I left for Orlando Reads Books…

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Crossroads
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 5)

124023 / 130000

I’m closer to a finished book. But I’ve got a chapter or two before I can say Crossroads is done.

I said last week I was keeping an eye on my events for later this year? I have one fewer on which to keep an eye. Books at the Beach is still happening, but I have decided that I will not be going. I learned something this past weekend at ORB — doing a large event alone is something of which I am no longer capable. Not with the amount of STUFF that needs to be transported and set up. And the timing of Books at the Beach would require me to go alone. So I talked to the showrunners, cancelled my spot and my hotel, and announced to the attendees.

(If the show does end up being postponed because of Covid? Then my spot will carry over to the postponement dates. Which means I might have to make another decision down the line, but I’m okay with that.)

So my plans for this week? Finish this book, figure out my show layout and what I need to do for Necronomicon in September, and find a place to put all the things because it makes no sense to put them AWAY when I just need them out again in a few weeks.

ORB was a lot of fun, as usual. I do enjoy this event. They have the best parties, too. This year’s theme was Midsummer Night Faire, so we dressed for the occasion.

Teen boy declined to be involved in the picture. He attended as that most fantastical of creatures — the teenage boy who actually wants to hang out with his parents.

Yes, he heard me say that

And in other news, this lovely thing arrived while I was at ORB.

I need to get a frame for that.

Catch you all next week, with a hopefully finished manuscript!

Best planned lays

Ready…Set…Wait….

Work in Progress

Promotions

Appearances

Closing In On The End.

Works in Progress

Promotions!

Hinges

A World of Blurry Dilation, 2023 edition

The Space Where Fandom and Academia Collide…

Mondayist Monday that ever Mondayed

C is for Cookie. That’s Good Enough for Me!

New Beginnings Lead to New Endings.

Down Time and Catching Up.

Best Laid Plans…

Works in Progress

Appearances

Find My Books!

Social Media

Let's Keep in Touch!

Thanks for signing up!