February Musings

It’s Valentine week. That time of year when the mainstream media remembers that romance novels exist, and that they have to publish their hot takes about how this romance is not like all those other trashy books. This is trashy, but with class!

The “I’m not like other <fill-in-the-blank>!” stories that you see every year about this time.

Now, I tend to ignore those. Because really, these journalists prove time and again that they are not and have no interest in ever learning about the audience for romance. All they want to do is say, “Look! Books with kissing and girl-shit! It’s Valentine’s Day. That’s about kissing and girl-shit! Let’s write about how dumb we think kissing and girl-shit is!” They completely ignore that romance is big business that keeps the lights on in publishing, because kissing and girl-shit.

I haven’t cross-referenced, but I wonder how many of these same journalists wax lyrical about the Super Bowl. I mean, really, it’s just violence and boy-shit, right?

(I used to be a football fan, but the NFL’s blatant disregard for player health and safety has turned me off the game entirely.)

Anyhow, I heard that yesterday Rhianna threw a baby shower, and some football broke out? Oh, and there were puppies playing for a few hours. That was fun.

I got no writing done over the weekend. There was some hefty organizing — I emptied my pantry, sorted and disposed of expired things that had gotten buried, and then put everything back in. (The impetus was my husband telling me I didn’t need to go pick up cake mix for his birthday. He found some in the pantry. It was, however, three years expired. “No, honey, I’m not getting you botulism for your birthday.”)

I’m closing in on the hinge chapter of The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath — the travel chapter that brings our hero back to Eire. Then the shenanigans really start! And I need to rework the last chapter I wrote of The Sea Prince and have this one character tell me if she’s actually an abusive, manipulative bitch or not. It could be that she’s gaslighting but that would mean she’s gaslighting ME. Which, I suppose, means that she’s good at it?

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

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The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, Book 1)

In other news, the Rebel Mage series went wide this weekend, and is now available wherever ebooks are sold. The paperbacks have been widely available since I republished last year, but I took the ebooks out of KU when their term expired. So if you prefer to read via Apple or Nook, or shop at Smashwords or Kobo, you can now get the complete Rebel Mage series on your ereader or tablet. The series begins with Counsel of the Wicked. Rebel Mage is, I think, the darkest series I’ve ever written, and the only one that has content warnings at the front of every book. The preview should show you the content warning page, and this is a series where I must insist that you READ THE CONTENT WARNINGS. (If you can’t see the preview, you can find the content warnings on the book page of my website.)

That’s pretty much it for this week. Now to go see if I wrote myself into a corner in this hostage situation in ancient Rome…