A Writer's Haven

It’s been two or three weeks since I’ve updated this blog. I sincerely apologize because my head has been in City of Heroes nearly constantly.

It’s good to see it back, to play the old missions. Arachnos, Warriors, Council, Sky Raiders, the maps, the missions and contacts – it brought back old memories. Fighting in caves, warehouses, offices…different than Champions Online. I found out some ways to get different perks.

This is OCD in full-bloom. I need to ease up.

1. I plan on stepping away from the game, attempting to just get on during the weekends.
2. I need to write again. Something upbeat and fluffy, as something different. It’ll probably never see the light of day, though.
3. I can grab a couple of characters and write stories about them from CoX. Personally I like Maximillian (Leader of “The Maximum Ride Gang”)–he’s a villain.
4. I have other characters that I can work on. My writing depends on characters, not settings or plots.

This week, Maxwell Thomas has a book coming out, the omnibus of Brothers of the Zodiac. It’s eBook only, so available on Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, etc.

Next weekend is Autumnfest, so I’ll be there for three days with Paper Angel Press stuff, in addition to my own stuff.

I have a podcast ready at Dark Mystic Quill, and it’s about history in writing.

I’m still working on Air, which is due in February. Fire will be out in October. War Mage is finished and ready to be out on the 1st. It’s short, and I apologize, but I couldn’t get a whole novel no matter how I tried.

I have no idea what to do for NaNoWriMo. My Vegas Fey character is intriguing, with a communicative sword,”with the attention span of a gnat on meth.” I’ll have to take him out of Vegas, though. Put him off the coast of Newport maybe? On a houseboat? Hmmmm…

Time to break out the little booklets and plot books for ideas.

War Mage is finished, and books are on their way to me. I’ll be at the Autumnfest next week in Woonsocket, RI for the whole weekend, selling my books and books from Paper Angel Press. They will include Books 1 and 2 of the Glass Bottle series, Building Baby Brother and Children of the Wrong Time.

My books are Homecoming, War Mage, Grimaulkin, Grimaulkin Tempted, Grimaulkin Redeemed, and the erotica series, Water and Earth. (Fire is later this month.)  In addition, my free short stories “Self-Defense”, “The Joint”, and “Family Bonds” will be available FOR FREE. FREE, FREE, FREE!

Lastly, I’ll offer Tarot readings for any purchase.

I’m working on research for Air’s first story: a Revolutionary War spy. Guess what sign that is?

I’m writing on my lunch hour. I get about a hand-written 8×10 page finished every day. I can’t seem to write the sex scenes, though. It’s like the environment isn’t conductive to that kind of thing.

I sold a total of 18 books at WorldCon, my new record. I doubt I’ll beat that record at RI Comicon, but I’ll try.

Fire is being edited as we speak; “War Mage” is next on the docket. I sent Blood From a Stone for a read-over to see if it’s worth producing. What’s next is a story for a possible anthology next year. I’m writing character sketches about them right now, and the story is relatively formed in my head.

One thing I’ve found out in my writing and editing is that I have to work on my endings. They seem abrupt and quick, coming out of nowhere and just “ending”. I need to learn to pull them out a little more and make them not sou out of left-field.

I noticed how my writing has improved and changed over the years by looking at “Aries” versus, say, “Leo”. Aries is full of detail, superfluous in places, showing off my knowledge. Leo tells the damn story. As my editor says, “Your writing is clean and sparse.” It tells the story without going off on tangents or down rabbit holes. Aries didn’t do that. Aries is my “I know a lot about WW2, and I’m going to show you.”\ I wrote that story off my obsession with WW2, which is why it goes down rabbit holes and goes into detail.

Even seeing Homecoming versus Grimaulkin Redeemed, I can see the difference. Perhaps my writing is getting better. Perhaps I’ve found my voice, finally.

What next? Well, I could continue the zodiac theme by dividing them into Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable signs. I could have the planets as Gods on Earth. I was going to do the seven deadly sins, but that’s been done so much. Have the seven graces been done? That would be a switch. That would be Max’s story.

As for me…the short story, maybe some poetry. An anthology of stories from Grimaulkin.

We shall see.

WorldCon 76 is just about a month away, and we plan to have a large presence there. There will be not only my books–Grimaulkin Redeemed is now available and it’s a really nice contrast to the dark colors of the first two, a great eye-catcher.  There will also be books by J Dark in her Glass Bottles series, Building Baby Brother by Steven Radecki, and Children of the Wrong Time by Flavia Ada.  And dragons. And card readings.

I had an event yesterday and sold one book, which I was happy about. These small fairs, though, are a real crapshoot. Most of the people who come to them are older folk looking for stuff for them or their grandchildren. I happened to get lucky and get a 15 year old who was so excited to read his first “New Adult” book that he kept saying, “I can’t wait to read this!” He probably started reading it in the car.

After the event, I decided to sit down and start War Mage again. I’m following my own advice and making up stuff based on research. The history is all wrong, there is no Firebase Jackson, there is no Colonel Parlance, but there is a 10th Mountain Division. I just put them there because from what I’ve read, those guys kick ass. I have the sinking feeling, though, I’m not going to get 50K words out of it. We’ll see what happens.

A new podcast is up at Dark Mystic Quill. It’s about magic and writing. Together.

Fire is on hold until after WorldCon while the publisher gets things ready for that. All I care about is fitting in the bathroom on the plane. If I don’t, you’ll see me on youtube and CNN as the idiot lady who got stuck in a JetBlue bathroom. I’ll be famous! And sell lots of books!

Finished Fire, and sent it off to the publisher. It’s a first draft, and I did a cursory glance over it.

I don’t want to work on Air just yet. I feel like I need a break from the erotica. Or more akin to male-male romance stories with spice.

What do I work on now?

War Mage is a monkey on my back. I promised to deliver that over two years ago, and I just can’t do it. I was talking to someone at a poetry open-mic and I told her I wrote m/m erotica. She said she did too, and wanted me to read her stuff. She told me the backdrop, and she said she can’t seem to complete it because it takes place in the Civil War and “I want to get the history right.”

I told her, “It’s an alternate universe. Make it up.”

That’s when a light went on. I can be close to history but not exact. I can make up the villages, the outposts, the FOB’s, the men and their units…I don’t have to be on target. As long as I make it believable, people will come along for the ride and suspend belief long enough to follow. I will, of course, get some people who say, “The 1st Indiana was in Kabul, not in Aslamabad”, but I’m not writing this for military fanatics. If I get the weaponry and typical standard operating procedure right (thank God for Sebastian Junger), I should do fine.

Now comes time to write it. For the tenth time.

Hey there,

Grimaulkin Redeemed, the last (maybe) of the Grimaulkin series, is coming out very soon. VERY soon. We’re waiting on finalization of some things, but it’s coming out soon. In conjunction with that, Grimaulkin is on sale for .99 for the Kindle edition for a couple of weeks only. After  you’ve read that, Grimaulkin Tempted will be on sale for .99 for the Kindle version as well.  Then you’ll be all caught up and ready for Grimaulkin Redeemed! 

And if you feel like listening to Grimaulkin, it’s on audiobook right now! Really worth that single Audible credit.

I’ve put a request for Water to be reviewed by Boy Meets Boy, so hopefully that will come out soon.

Fire is slated to be out in October. I’m working on “Leo” right now and even though my friend thinks it’s a stupid idea (She’s a Leo), I’m having a blast with it. Once I finish “Leo”, I’ll send everything out to the publisher and we’ll go from there.

I’m trying to think of what series I should do next. The planets? Greek gods? Rickk Riordan and his fanbase has done that to death. Norse gods? Neil Gaiman and Marvel have a lock on that. Celtic gods? Iron Druid series. I’m open to any ideas. More of the zodiac signs, as “Fixed, Mutable, Cardinal?” Planetary aspects such as “Neptune in Fall” or “Pluto Rising”? Full novels?

Decisions, decisions.

I had an event scheduled for yesterday, but it got rained out. Even though it didn’t rain. (They decided to cancel because of threat of thunder showers–but this is New England, and the weatherman is 88% wrong.)

Grimaulkin Redeemed is still slated for July 1, but we’re having technical difficulties, so the print version may not be available at that time. I had hoped to have it for my Shastea appearance next Thursday, but such is life. I doubt I’ll sell anything there anyway.

Hm, let’s see. I’ve been working on Fire and am finding myself with a writer’s block on “Leo”. I’m adding some light BDSM to it, and I have to research it. I was upset when I got a $2.99 book from Amazon, and it was a chapter of a book. A chapter! We sell whole books for $2.99. This is why my erotica is more story than sex now.

Anyway…I used Storymatic to generate a new idea, and it was “A long awaited invitation” and “poet”. I was going to do Walt Whitman as Gemini, but then I dropped that idea. I decided to check out Wattpad because that’s where all the cool kids go these days. Wattpad is fanfic, according to my son, so why can’t I just twist history around, and have Walt Whitman have a relationship with Henry David Thoreau?

Bingo!

So for giggles, I’m writing a really bad fanfic of those two getting together, even though they probably never did. I noticed that if I free myself from reality then the story happens. This is what the problem with War Mage is–I’m too stuck in its reality. in satisfying people who were there, that I can’t write it. Maybe I’ll try it in Wattpad to see how it goes.