Planning

Dec

2024

Cookies Called on Account of Pain.

I’ve had to delay the start of Cookiepocalypse. With my incredible sense of comedic timing, on Day 2 of Cook All the Things, I pulled a muscle in my back badly enough that standing is mind-numbingly painful. Cookies called on account of pain. I should be up to baking later this week or early next week, and I have a list of four cookies so far (there might be one or two more before I’m done. I’ve been challenged to make a coquito shortbread to go with the coquito poundcake….)

There wasn’t a lot of writing last week, because cooking and pain medication don’t add up to a lot of words. Granted, they’re words I’m starting to wonder if I really need, but I think I’m just going to keep going the way I’m going and see how the story falls out. If it needs to be cut, then I’ll cut it in post. If I second-guess myself, I’ll never get done.

The Sea Prince is going to be off to a sensitivity reader today or tomorrow. Writing a character who is a double amputee was more than a little challenging, and I want to be certain that I’ve done it right. If I haven’t, then I need to know what to fix. I’m hoping to have this book out in early 2025, but that will depend on how much work needs to be done when I get it back. Once it’s done and out in the world, I’ll need to start The Coral Throne.

The other thing I need to start is planning for 2025. I know I’ll be at ICFA in March. I’m considering a mall show in May, and that’s about all I have written in warm Jello at the moment. I’ll update the list of appearances as soon as I know where I’ll be.

That’s all for this week. Make sure you check out the books on sale with Stuff with Fantasy!

Special Offer!

Stuff With Fantasy is hosting the December Dash promotion, where you can buy signed books and book bundles directly from indie authors (like me!) I’m already set up with a 25% off coupon on my signed book site for those dates. Use code DECDASH to get the discount, and your books will arrive wrapped, with a gift tag for you to personalize, and with a couple of goodies added for good measure. (Please note: anything purchased this week will be shipping on Monday the 9th, because I’m not up to running to the post office every day this week.)

Work in Progress

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

100602 / 150000 (67.07%)

Appearances

All done for 2024!

Nov

2024

Now Entering The Holiday Zone

Alternate title — There Are Cookies In That Nebula.

Yes, we have entered the Holiday Zone. Thanksgiving is next week, and then… well, if you’ve been around for a while, you know what comes after Thanksgiving.

COOKIEPOCALYPSE!

(Image of three layer cookies on a clear plate. The cookies are green, yellow and red, with a white chocolate coating.)

Oddly enough, I still have no idea what sorts of cookies I’m going to make this year, other than three color to start and struffuli to end. Those are non-negotiable. Other than that? I’m going to take a poll at Thanksgiving dinner, because everyone who will be eating those cookies will be sitting at that table.

I sincerely doubt that there will be a draft before the Solstice, which is my usual rallying cry at this time of the year. King of Swords will continue until I finally hit the end, and I can no longer say how long that will take. Editing this beast is going to be all kinds of fun — how many of these too-many-words are going to end up on the cutting room floor? Find out sometime next year!

If you follow me on Tiktok, you saw that last week, I dropped off copies of Written in Water at the newest bookstore in Orlando, the romance bookstore The New Romantics. It’s SUPER cute (and, I didn’t realize, Taylor Swift themed!) They’re doing soft-openings on the weekends, with the grand opening on December 7th. If you’re in the area, check them out!

I’m starting to wind down for the end of the year. I may not blog next week because there will be cooking practically every day. I have no more shows (and resisted the urge to add one). If there are no last minute sales through my website, then I can close the book on what was a very good year.

Now I just need to finish this book….

Work in Progress

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

95866 / 150000 (63.91%)

Appearances

All done for 2024!

Sep

2024

Prep All the Things!

Today is September 16th, and I have the first of five shows in a little under two weeks. It’s time to PREP ALL THE THINGS!

Books have been ordered (and in the cases of three titles, more books have been delivered than I ordered, because mistakes were made.) Stock boxes are packed. Prices lists have been printed. Hotel reservations have been made (actually, they were made a while ago.) Vaccines have been onboarded (yesterday.)

Still to do? Haul the boxes off show stuff from my office down to the living room. Print off packing lists. Prep for my panels (and possibly bug the person in charge of scheduling to let me know when those panels are going to be happening because it’s getting late…) And I have to do the things that have to be done before the end of the month, because I’ll be busy from the end of the month until the beginning of November, and a couple of these things are time sensitive.

And, of course, in the middle of all of this, there must be writing done. I’m just over the halfway number on King of Swords, and wondering if I need to increase my wordcount again. Honestly, at this point? I think I’m just going to put words on the page, and if it ends up being two books? It ends up being two books. I can’t imagine my publisher being annoyed at that.

I finished my editing pass on The Sea Prince the other night, and sent it over to my editor to take another look. There are still a couple of questions that need to be answered, but if things fall the way I think they will, then The Sea Prince will launch on Kindle Vella late this year or early next. That’s written in very warm Jello at the moment, though.

While I wait for edits and answers, I’m working on the outlines/synopsis/what my characters are going to laugh at this time for The Covert Saloon series. I sort of pushed that to the side to finish up The Sea Prince, and now I’m almost done with book one. I have a vague idea (nope, not gonna say it…) as to what book 2 will be like, and I know how book 3 is going to end, but not how it’s going to start. Not yet. This series may end up being more discovery writing than I usually do, but we’ll see when we get to that point.

I’m also not sure if it’ll be the next thing I work on, or if I’ll be starting The Coral Throne (the sequel to The Sea Prince.) Or maybe I’ll dive into the Iron and Silk series — that’s all plotted and ready to go, except for some of the research. Or lightning could strike and I could sell Blood Bound tomorrow, which would mean going back into the Flesh and Blood universe and my kinky vampires.

So many choices!!!!

Finish King of Swords first, Liz. Then decide.

Work in Progress

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

63263 / 120000 (52.72%)

Promotions

Shockingly, Counsel of the Wicked is still a contender for SPFBOX, which means that it is still on sale wherever ebooks are sold.

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

Apr

2024

What Am I Forgetting?

I know I’m forgetting something. What is it? What am I forgetting….?

Oh.

So now you know why today’s blog is so late. I plain forgot it was Monday. To be fair, I’m a little distracted. Edits for Morrigan’s Heir came in on Friday, and I’ve been going through them. The initial edits are minor — mostly house style changes and a couple of corrections. The actual work I’ve been doing has been making the the small changes I need to make with things that came up during the writing of Morrigan’s Wrath. That’s going nicely.

Right now, the plan is to make all the changes and updates. Then I’m going to go back through Heir from the start and transition right into a first read-through for Wrath. Why first? Because when I finished writing Wrath, I printed it out and put it aside to wait. I haven’t reread it since I finished it, which means that any edits that need to be made will jump off the page. I hope. Once I reread it, then I’ll update Wrath for any changes I need to make. Then I will send both manuscripts in to my editor so that he can read them both back-to-back.

And once those manuscripts are sent, and after the Indie Book Bazaar at Spellbound Books on April 27th, I’m off until mid-June. Except I might still keep working on the worldbuilding for “Frog and Fae are Friends,” at least until I know what the title REALLY is. But starting at the end of April, it will be all prep for graduation and vacation — cleaning and getting things in order for house guests, then packing and getting everything in order for a long-postponed vacation.

It’s been a while since I took an extended time off. I’m not sure I know how to do it anymore. I’ll report back in mid-June as to how I did.

Appearances

Join me on April 27th at Spellbound Books for Independent Bookstore Day! I’ll be part of the Indie Book Bazaar from 2 – 3:45PM, but Independent Bookstore Day is a full day event. If you’re not in the area, check out your local independent bookstore to see what they’ve got planned!

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A post shared by Spellbound Bookstore | Downtown Sanford (@spellboundbookstorefl)

Mar

2024

Monday, Monday…

Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day…

I have to admit that I like Mondays best when they’re not quite so… Mondayish. And today Monday is being an overachiever. Nothing I can share, mind, but beating my head against the wall would be a welcome respite, if only because I could STOP.

Needless to say, today has been a heck of a long week, and most of that was before noon. Some of it was even before coffee. It will hopefully all be resolved before dinner.

Hopefully.

Edits are coming in this week — I confirmed that. So I’ll be starting work on Morrigan’s Heir soon, and then doing a readthrough and editing pass on Morrigan’s Wrath. Deadline for me is having both back to my editor by the end of April (my target is to have everything done by April 27th — the day of the Indie Book Bazaar at Spellbound Books.) And I should hopefully have a rough synopsis for “Frog and Fae are Friends” done sometime this week, too, and then i can give a bit more thought to the worldbuilding. I’m still not sure if this will be a serial or a novel or a series of shorts. We’ll see what happens when I sit down to actually write it. Which, I have to say, not sitting down and starting either this or Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand is hard! Both of them want to be started right now!

The schedule for the rest of this week is packed solid, but it will end on a high note — someone has Senior Prom this weekend. The beginning of the fun part of Senior Year is starting.

I’d better lay in tissues…

Giveaways!

This is the last week where you can download a copy of my dark fantasy romance Counsel of the Wicked FREE through the On Fire Romance promotion. (Content warning — this book is the darkest thing that I have ever written, and includes on the page explicit sexual violence. Go carefully.)

Image of a flame. Text reads "On Fire. Free Spicy Romance Ebooks. March 1-31"

Mar

2024

Getting Ready to GO!

Here it is, not quite ICFA Eve, and I am getting ready to go. Prep is starting slowly — I’ve gotten some things together to go, but the real packing happens tomorrow. As does the food prep — I usually bring breakfasts, so I don’t have to fuss with finding safe food. I’ll lay out the clothes I’m going to wear so I know which suitcase I’ll need. I’ll make sure the scooter batteries are charged…

Wait, what? What scooter?

This one:

(Yes, my living room was a mess when I took this picture. It isn’t anymore.)

That is Stitch, and he has considerably more character now (stickers. He has stickers). I’ve had a mobility scooter since last October. I had hoped to not need him this weekend, but I’m having a bad arthritis week, so I’d rather bring him just in case, and save my spell slots for actually being at the conference rather than being in pain.

Newsflash — Arthritis sucks.

What doesn’t suck is that in two days, I’ll be at ICFA, and I’ll be back behind the registration table (when I’m not attending panels or hosting them, or reading!) I really do enjoy this conference, although it is weird in a way. I tend to go by myself — no husband and no son. I’m off doing adulty things all alone, and that usually never happens!

Well… as adulty as things get when you put a bunch of geeky academics and creatives together in a hotel, anyway.

As part of my “getting ready for ICFA” prep, I’ve finished the synopsis for The Coral Throne, and yes, this will be a duology. It also may not turn out the way I think it will, but that’s normal for my synopses — once I get writing, the characters that the lead. I’m still working on the planning for “Frog and Fae are Friends,” and I’m pretty sure that they’re going to be MUCH more than friends by the end of the first part. I just haven’t decided yet if this is going to be a series of interconnected short stories, or if it’s going to be a novel. We’ll see how the planning turns out once I actually get to it. This also means that it’s not going on Patreon, because I don’t want Patreon to faint and kick me off the platform. I’m not sure where it WILL go yet, but again, we’ll see.

I also pulled out the synopsis for Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand, and got the Scrivener file set up, including entering the opening scene that I hand wrote months ago. That’s now ready to go, and I have to convince myself to wait to start it until June. (Who wants to open book on if I can do it?)

Edits should be in shortly after ICFA, so Morrigan’s Heir is one step closer to being released to the world, and once I finish the edits on Heir, then I’ll reread Morrigan’s Wrath for the first time since I printed off the manuscript. My aim is to have both manuscripts off to my editor by the end of April, just in time to go offline for graduation prep.

That’s the plan. Let’s see if the universe laughs.

Giveaways!

For the month of March, you can download a copy of my dark fantasy romance Counsel of the Wicked FREE through the On Fire Romance promotion. (Content warning — this book is the darkest thing that I have ever written, and includes on the page explicit sexual violence. Go carefully.)

Feb

2024

Could It Be… The End?

In my files, my oldest notes on The Sea Prince date from July of 2009. I think that’s accurate to within a month or so, because I distinctly remember getting this idea in the car on the way to Ikea, and going off to sit with a cup of coffee in the restaurant to write down the initial thoughts and characters ideas before going shopping.

I am fairly certain that I will be completing this manuscript sometime this week. There is the current battle scene to finish, then two scenes after that. This may very well be on the last chapter…

Could this be… The End?

Truth be told, there are a couple of other ideas and manuscripts in my files that are older than The Sea Prince, but they’re all in a folder entitled “X — Unlikely to Develop.” (Surprisingly, the novel I wrote in high school is in there. You know how they say you have to write a million words of crap before you get good at it? Those were the first of them. It was…not good. And I’m not even sure I can still open the file.)

Once I finish The Sea Prince? I’m putting it aside until either edits are done on Morrigan’s Heir and I’ve cleaned up and submitted Morrigan’s Wrath, or until June, whichever comes first. I’ll be working on the synopsis for The Coral Throne (book 2 of this series), and I’ll be working on the worldbuilding from Frog and Fae. I’ve started it, and it’s looking like it will be a fun thing to write. Between all of those, that should take me to May, which I am taking off for graduation reasons. The Sea Prince will be there in June, and that’s when I’ll read through it again and decide what direction I want to go — put it out on sub, self-publish immediately, or put it on Vella and self-pub it next year.

And in the meantime, I’m still trying to convince myself that yes, after however many false starts and restarts and rewrites and revisions, that this could finally be the end of The Sea Prince.

Works in Progress

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, Book 1)

96813 / 105000 (92.20%)

Feb

2024

It’s Blursday

I had my eyes dilated at 8:15 this morning. It is now 1:41 PM and I still can’t see clearly out of my left eye. The light sensitivity is better, but I had to turn down the brightness on both of my monitors. And I couldn’t see to drive a certain young man to class, but attendance isn’t mandatory so rather than pull Darling Husband out of meetings, we all just stayed in because it’s Blursday.

With everything going on last week, it wasn’t as much of a word week as I’ve had. I still made my target of 500 words a day for six days (words on Sunday are bonus words), so it wasn’t a bad week. It just wasn’t as prolific as the previous weeks have been. But that’s okay.

The synopsis for The Coral Throne is coming slowly. Which, it can come slowly — I’m not in a rush to get to it, and I want to make sure I get things figured out before I get to the scene where X has to attack Y and how does that work exactly? (You’ll find out. I promise. But I have to work out the details.)

There’s also this other project of mine, which currently has the placeholder title of “Frog and Fae are Friends.” I put the excerpt that popped into my head and wouldn’t get out into my newsletter a few weeks ago, and it’s been percolating in the back of my brain since. I think this might be the next Patreon project if the sex stays behind closed doors, and I’m trying to worldbuild without pushing the existing Coral Throne worldbuilding out of my head. If you missed the excerpt in the newsletter, I’ll pop a short sample of it down below. It may turn into a fantasy Sherlock Holmes kind of thing, which would be new for me, but that seems to be the direction it’s leaning. We shall see.

Still waiting on edits for Morrigan’s Heir, but if my editor’s week last week was anything like mine? I get it. I TOTALLY get it. And considering that I’m maybe a chapter and a half from finishing The Sea Prince? I can wait — a delay lets me get this manuscript finished before diving into edits, and gives me the space to let The Sea Prince get out of my head before I go back to reread it for revision. It’s all good.

So, tell me what you think of the excerpt.

Works in Progress

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, Book 1)

92468 / 120000 (77.06%)

Placeholder title “Frog and Fae are Friends.” — Excerpt

Desperate times call for truly fucked up measures.

I know better than to mess with mages, let alone steal from them. I know. But I was at the very end of my non-existent rope. It had been a long, hard winter already, and there were still three moons before even an hope of a thaw. The benevolent shelters for the needy were full to bursting, and even I’d had the coin, the cheap inns were full as well. There was not a bed or a slice of floor to be had anywhere in the slums of Alatrea. Not for the likes of me.

What there was, though, was a mage, who’d taken residence in a posh, new, townhouse right before the first snow. He hadn’t been settled long enough to claim the place as his home-ground – that took at least six moons for the strongest mage, and a year or more for the average spell-slinger. That mean that the usual protection spells weren’t going to be foolproof yet.

I just wasn’t usually that much of a fool.

Dec

2023

Lofty Goals

Lofty goals, I have them. I have perhaps three chapters left to finish in Valley of Shadows (which drops my wordcount from 90K to 75K.) I am saying this to the public at large, and with my WHOLE chest!

This week I am going to finish this book!!!

As I said, lofty goals. Doable lofty goals, but lofty goals. I’ll be posting my daily wordcounts on Mastodon and Blusky, so you can follow along as I race to finish.

Then… COOKIES!!!

I’m honestly looking forward to the break this year. Although getting me to actually stop doing ANYTHING will be… challenging. I’ve been going at a fever pitch since I started Written in Water in 2018, and I’m not sure I know how to do downtime anymore. Even my vacations are high energy (I vacation at Disney…which means I have fun, but I don’t necessarily relax.) So I’ve decided that once Valley of Shadows is done, I’m taking time away from the laptop. I’m not going to get back to The Sea Prince until January, and I might not even blog! (We’ll see if I hold true to that!)

So what are my plans for the break? Because it’s me and of course there have to be plans? Reading. I have multiple stacks of books to catch up on, and I just added more. There is SO MUCH TV to catch up on — I still haven’t watched season 2 of Loki, and there are about a half-dozen Star Wars shows I need to binge. I want to go down to Disney to see the holiday decorations and do the gingerbread crawl (I’m not sure when that will happen — our park passes black out the 19th.) And I have knitting projects I want to finish.

So, knitting and reading and bingewatching and cookies? Sounds like a plan.

Cookiepocalypse will start next week, so you can keep an eye on Instagram for that. So far, I know I’m making three color cookies to start, and struffuli (which Owyn makes in Wings of Air) to finish. In the middle? I haven’t decided, although I did have a request for oatmeal carob chip. (Hrm… I haven’t made molasses cookies in ages. Maybe I’ll make those, too.)

Follow the Instagram for the cookies — it’ll be a surprise!

In other, other news, my publisher said the most fascinating words to be the other day. Foreign rights. As in, they’ll be shopping them around, so they needed some info from me to put into the pitch. 2024 is promising to be very interesting indeed!

Works in Progress

Valley of Shadows
Heir to the Firstborn, Book 7

66861 / 75000 (89.15%)

This book will be done this week! I have said it!

Promotions!

The Smashwords End of the Year sale is coming up December 15th. My ENTIRE catalog will be on sale for 25% off ONLY on Smashwords!

Now, because of the Draft2Digital/Smashwords merger, I have TWO author pages on Smashwords (actually, I have four, but two of them are from publishers.) The two that I maintain will be combined at some point, but until then, the catalogs that will be on sale are here and here.

Nov

2023

The Prep Begins

T-minus-10 days until Thanksgiving. The prep begins. I started today with the baking of the pumpkin pie. Why start so early? Because I want to enjoy my Thanksgiving, thank you very much. I started today with cleaning a room, and baking a pie. Tomorrow, I have to get my ~~head~~ eyes examined, so I’m not cleaning, but I am going to get all the shopping done, and I’ll be making candied ginger because I need it for the cranberries and for the turkey, and I can’t find candied ginger without a wheat warning anywhere. I’m also starting sourdough rolls (technically I started today because I fed the starter, but I make the actual dough tomorrow.)

I actually sat down to make a schedule of what gets cleaned and/or cooked on what day covering every day between now and Thanksgiving. Every day has a room to clean or shopping to be done, and a dish to prepare. This early, things will head to the freezer, which will leave room in the refrigerator to defrost the turkey that I’ll be brining next week (I use Alton Brown’s turkey brine from Good Eats.)

My plan is that by the time Thanksgiving comes, all I have to do is get up, have breakfast, watch the parade, and put the bird in the oven. Everything else (with the exception of whatever fresh vegetables I make) will be done and just need to be warmed. That way, I can have a relaxing time with my house full of people. It’s a plan that’s worked very well for a very long time now.

I haven’t given much thought yet to Cookiepocalypse. One holiday at a time, right? But Cookiepocalypse is coming, and I’ll be taking requests from the young people in my life as to what cookies they want. And from the older people in my life, too. Once I know what I’m making, I’ll make a schedule for baking that allows me to also keep working on Balance of Power.

I’m starting to think that Balance of Power may need a new title. I’ve gone far enough away from the original outline that Balance of Power no longer quite fits the story. The current front runner in my head is Valley of Shadows. I think it fits better. We shall see what the Patrons think.

In other news, I found out the other day that Morrigan’s Heir has been pushed back to early 2024. As soon as I have a date, I’ll share it.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. It’s much later in the day than I usually post to the blog, but it’s been a busy day! And there’s another busy day tomorrow.

Catch you all next week.

Works in Progress

Balance of Power
Heir to the Firstborn, Book 7

55575 / 90000 (61.75%)

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.

Then, on Cyber Monday, the sale continues! The Cavalcade of Authors will be holding a huge Cyber Monday sale, and for that sale, I’ll be adding in Forged in Fire AND Bones of Earth! To know when the link goes live for this one, you need to sign up for my newsletter. (I usually only put out one newsletter a month, although if there’s a new release or a big event, there might be a special edition.)

Planning

Cookies Called on Account of Pain.

Special Offer!

Work in Progress

Appearances

Now Entering The Holiday Zone

Work in Progress

Appearances

Prep All the Things!

Work in Progress

Promotions

Appearances

What Am I Forgetting?

Appearances

Monday, Monday…

Giveaways!

Getting Ready to GO!

Giveaways!

Could It Be… The End?

Works in Progress

It’s Blursday

Works in Progress

Placeholder title “Frog and Fae are Friends.” — Excerpt

Lofty Goals

Works in Progress

Promotions!

The Prep Begins

Works in Progress

Promotions!

Works in Progress

Appearances

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