Scary Amounts of Editing

I've mentioned from time to time how much I adore my beta reader and editor, Elizabeth L. Brooks, right?

I've been told by a few editors (NOT Liz) that I have very clean copy, they only needed to make minor changes, nothing to worry about.

The above screen capture is part of the reason why.

I have a new word for Liz's edits; she's not bleeding all over my manuscript, she's blue-bricking up my margins.

Look at this, my god! Every. Freaking. Page... it's a wonder I had any sanity left after I finished working with this manuscript...


As a note, you should have seen me a few weeks back, sobbing over edits for A Marked Man. It's not that my editor was harsh or anything, she's not... Elizabeth Lance is a godsend! but simply that there were so many changes that needed to be made.

Joke: How many dialogue tag mistakes can one writer make?
Answer: Apparently, all of them!

I was talking to a fan of the Rainbow Connection series who read Blues early for review... (it's already got one 4.5 star, so check it out!) and she says, coyly, "Well, you've already written Classic, right?"

I knew where this was going. "Yeah."

"Can I read it?"

"No! Jesus, no."

"Why not?"

The primary reason is that Classic is still in 2nd drafts. I have to fix / review / look at all the various stuff my beta readers pointed out, and THEN it will go off to Liz for content edits... after that, it goes through 2 rounds of proofing... at least one of those rounds of proof-reading has to happen before I'm not utterly ashamed to have anyone reading my work.

I love my editors. I really, really do. And you should, too...

Elizabeth L. Brooks (again!)

Happily, I still have some more writers for you to meet from my Coming Together: Among the Stars anthology... today, Elizabeth L. Brooks is back to talk about her latest work and to remind us all of how very freaking old I am... because what are best friends for?

Hello, Lynn's readers!

I have known Lynn for a long time. A really long time.

No, longer than that.

(a note from your writer: A Long Time, No, really... I don't always remember to tag her when she's on the blog, but she shows up more than anyone else, except maybe me... maybe.)

Lynn and I have been friends through college and boyfriends and girlfriends and breakups and post-college poverty. Through moves and marriages and pregnancies and children. Through one bad accident and several terrifying hospitalizations and more diets than I can shake a stick at and one divorce that wasn't as bad as it could have been but still wasn't anything like easy. We've been each other's beta readers and co-authors and editors and will always be each other's biggest fans.

Once, when we were hanging out with a bunch of friends, she happened to mention that we'd known each other for over ten years. I nearly did a spittake -- it couldn't have been that long, could it? -- and then added it all up, and sure enough: over ten years. Holy crap. That made me feel kind of old.
The near-spittake reaction was kind of funny, though, so after that, once a year or so Lynn would casually drop into a conversation how long we've known each other, and I would gasp and flail about how it couldn't possibly have been that long and oh god how old we were getting. (Mostly how old I was getting, because when I look at Lynn, I still see the same girl I roomed with in college.)

A few years back, it occurred to me that Lynn and I have been friends for literally more than half my life. And once I got over that shock, the actual number of years stopped surprising and horrifying me. (It's closing in on 25 years now, if you're curious.) I still act shocked sometimes when Lynn brings it up, though, because there's something comforting about having an in-joke that is literally decades old.
I understand about the bonds of a long-standing relationship, is what I'm saying.

In (Why Don't You) Come Between Us, my most recent story from Hot Ink Press, Treyvon thinks he understands those bonds. He's part of a threesome with Mike and Joey, but Mike and Joey were together for a long time before they invited Treyvon into the mix. The two of them have history, and Treyvon doesn't want to intrude on that. But what Joey and Mike need him to understand is that he can't come between them the way he fears, and that they need him as much as they need each other.


Buy Link Amazon

A Pair of Earbuds

I've been just on the edge of my seat for this announcement...

Ripped is now available as an audio book!

Among other things to come out of the writer's retreat... Nobilis, Elizabeth and I discussed setting some of our favorite stories from Whetting the Appetite (also now available in PAPERBACK!! Woo woo!) to earphones everywhere...

So, for those fans who want to take a listen, please go over and enjoy. At the end of the podcast is a coupon code for 20% off the ebook. (I'm not sure if this coupon code applies to the paperback or not. Probably not, because I think JM set it up for just the ebook... anyway....)

Whetting contains 40+ short stories across a multitude of genres, a wide variety of sexual partners (m/m to m/m/f/f to male/alien plant... no, I'm not kidding.)

Ripped is one of - in my personal opinion - the best things I've ever written. It's gloriously unrestrained, unapologetic for what it is, and written in an undeniable creepy voice. Which Nobilis captures quite well, I'm impressed.

I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Here, I have Malin James' review of the book and all the wonderful things she has to say about it...

including this final paragraph...

Lynn Townsend's "Ripped" is one of the most effective usages of the Jack the Ripper mythos that I've ever read. It is chilling and brutal and incredibly hot in a gritty, very human way. It is literally worth the price of the collection, and considering how incredibly good the rest of the collection is, that means anyone who buys the book is getting one hell of a ridiculous bargain.

So, listen, buy, read, enjoy....

They Do

Last year, Elizabeth and I did a challenge; the project was to write one ultra-short story per week for six months.

We both missed a few weeks here and there, but eventually we got to our goal, and about a month ago, Whetting the Appetite came out... but before that, there was months and months of writing short stories and very little gratification for it. We wrote and saved, wrote and saved.

Very early in the process, I wrote a little short called Home Inspection; I'd recently had a discussion with a friend about Grindr - he cruises a lot, you understand. But he also has a lot of complaints about the elitist attitude of the app-users. Much like any sort of dating app/situation/bar, there are people who seem to think that if they're very specific with their requirements, they'll get exactly what they want. (I have a girlfriend who had a list of 27 things that a man had to have, had to be, or had to Not Do in order to get a second date... ) In any case, I'd found the concept sort of intriguing... fiddled with the idea of writing a story about it, and never did. Until this short-story marathon came up.

(As a note, Elizabeth, I'm still waiting for you to write your hook-up story... ::cough cough ahem!:: )

So I wrote a short story about a very unlikely couple; a professional black man and a blue collar white guy.

It's one of my favorites in the collection.

And since I wrote it so early in the year, I had to live with it sitting there, doing nothing, for quite a while. I saw a number of writing calls where I could take the story out, lengthen it up a bit, and send it out. I kept not doing it. Which was, perhaps, harder than it should have been.

My reasoning was, if Elizabeth and I took out the best stories to send in to other collections, we'd be left with a collection of mediocre stories and who'd want to read that? In the end, I'm glad we didn't cherry pick through the collection, because I think we've got some great stories to offer, and I really like the flow of the collection. (Go buy it! Sheesh!)

Eric and Temple, however, have never quite left my mind, even after the deal was sealed. I always wanted to do more with them.

Elizabeth and I teased a bit with the idea of writing a second book, Satisfying the Appetite (maybe?) where we took some of the shorts from Whetting and fleshed them out. I've been out and out yelled at by a couple of readers who want to know what the HELL happened in the end of BoyMart, and I personally want to throttle Elizabeth for the ending of Woman with the Blue Tattoo. There are several stories in there that could become novels or novellas of their own, worlds to explore and universes to expand upon.

I've been mostly working on novels... Blues is finished, I'm waiting for one last set of beta read opinions, and I'll start edits probably around mid-May for submission in June/July... I'll probably start writing Classic in November, and then the two side-stories, All that Jazz and Punked Up...

I'm currently in the middle of writing Howling Bitch - it's going quite well, and I'm enjoying it.

And novels are all good and well; I enjoy writing novels.

But there's something quick and dirty about a short. No matter how much I tell myself "this is the year of working on longer projects," I find myself considering little ideas. I've actually stepped up and started collecting submissions for an anthology project of my own. (This is because I have lost my fucking mind... but still, should be interesting!)

Also, I really like the thrill of getting acceptances back; for a little project, for a big project, for a charity project. All of these things are wonderful, wonderful feelings. But with novels, they're really spread out. I can only write about 2 novels in a year...

So, I give in to temptation. Sometimes.

And I'll put together a short story for this antho or that collection.

Eric and Temple had more to say. I saw the opportunity to let them say it.

Building Us will be available June 15th.

Whetting the Appetite blurb and cover art

So, this exists...

Romance and erotica authors Lynn Townsend and Elizabeth L. Brooks have joined forces to assemble this collection of "flash-fiction" ultra-shorts (most under 2000 words), generated in response to prompts offered by our fans and friends and touching on dozens of aspects of lust, love, and desire.

Subgenres in the collection span contemporary, historial, steampunk, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, taking you from a modern living room, to the high seas, to Victorian London, to planets and times at the edge of imagination. These stories explore relationships all along the romantic and erotic spectrums, including the thrill of a one-night stand, the fierce burn of rivalry, the heady flush of new romance, the intense trust of BDSM, and all the pros and cons of long-term partnerships. The characters defy conventional gender boundaries, including a preoperative transmale, several aliens, and a few characters whose genders are left open to reader interpretation. Sexual orientations on display vary nearly as widely, with groupings that include m/f, m/m, f/f, and f/f/m -- not to mention those aliens!

With forty-six stories to choose from, there's something here for every moment and mood, something to whet any appetite.

My Writing Process Blog Tour - Get Out the Map

Last week, in a wee bit of a panic, Victoria Blisse asked me to participate in this blog tour about writing and the writing process...


1)     What am I working on?

The other day, my husband asked me if I ever intended to take another day off in my life. I didn't really know what to say to that.

Okay... ready for the list?

• Just finished the first draft of Blues, sequel to Roll, in the Rainbow Connection novels
• Working on the outline for Classic, the third in the Rainbow Connection series
• Expecting edits back for Blood Sight, book one in my Demoniac Codex series - once I get those, I'll do those edits and then I can begin writing Howling Bitch, which is book 2 in that series (I really need to change moods from New Adult novels to Urban Supernatural novels and I'm hoping that working on edits for Blood Sight will make Howling Bitch a little easier to write.) I intend to finish Howling Bitch by July. Ish.
• In the meanwhile, I have two short stories I want to write for a March 1st deadline, Hold the Dirigible! for Valves and Vixens, and Dreaming the Hardest, a fem fantasy piece. (Finally nailed an idea down for that, I had several that kept getting out of hand)

Right now, I'm technically in that wibbly wobbly timey wimey stage where I'm not quite certain WHAT I want to work on. I imagine I'll snap out of it in a day or so.

2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I'm very conscious of gender dynamics and the inequality inherent in relationships. Every time my characters have sex, there's a reason for why they're doing the specific act. Beau, in my novel Roll, for instance, is a topper, very dominant. Outside the bedroom, he's feels that he's lost control of his entire life, and this is somewhere that he thinks he can gain back some of that power. In Golden Moment - my story in the Steamlust anthology - my characters have sex in front of a mirror. In Garden Variety - in Lustfully ever After - the male character never has an orgasm. All these things are deliberate, reflecting the emotional state of my characters in other connotations. The sex is, therefore, an expression of the rest of their lives...

3)     Why do I write what I do?

Funny story; my best friend and I wrote sex scenes back and forth to each other for years before we had any idea that there was a market for it. (we are now both published erotica writers... and we have a book of short stories coming out in March!)

I've always said that I engage in writing love stories because I miss that feeling of falling in love. I've been with my husband for ish 18 years now. I love him, but there's something eager and crazy and fun about falling in love that honestly you just don't get anymore in a long term relationship. There are times when you look over at your long-term partner who's being wonderful and you get that dip and glide in your belly - THATs what I fell in love with! - but a lot of times it's also paying the mortgage and fussing at each other about who's turn it is to do the dishes.

Writing a love story, getting deep into a character's head and heart, gives me that feeling again, the rush of new love, the passion and the absolute need for each other Right Now.

One of my favorite web comics, A Softer World, sums it up pretty well for me in this strip... writing romance gives me that rush without doing something utterly stupid with my real life.

4)     How does your writing process work?

I'm really process-oriented... I hate writing myself into a corner. I've tried pantsing before, and all that does for me is end up with me crying about edits, trying to figure out how to get this scene to match up with THAT scene.

So, I usually start with an outline. I jot each scene down and lay them out in front of me, okay, this happens and then that happens, and here's some questions about the ramifications of that event. Usually, the first draft of my outline goes something like this.

MC has a vampire ex boyfriend.
This sucks
flashback, dead parents. why? angel rescues her, best friends with vampire
the head of the magic counsel puts a warrant on her death
vampire has to protect her
goes back to being in love
this seriously sucks
complication with brother? what the hell? how did we have a brother?
vampire <censored for spoilers>
Ow. oops. looks <censored for spoilers>
fight off the magic guy
smack brother in head
the end.

I go back and expand on this sort of jot-down, making scenes and collecting them into chapters. (this is the original outline from Blood Sight that I grabbed from my notebook. The outline has undergone significant revision since I wrote this down, back in 2011...

Once I have a polished draft of my outline, I'll write a chapter or two, see how the story's going. Add stuff to the outline that should be added (including physical descriptions when I remember, because I have a horrible tendency to change people's eye colors - this boils down to my husband having weird mood eyes. He has hazel eyes that range in shade from brilliant blue to almost brown, but are usually a middling shade of yellow-brown with green flecks. I was dating him for like 3 months before I realized his eyes weren't actually brown.)

I write in order, from beginning to end. I tried jumping around a few times, and I've discovered that all that does for me is leave me at the end of the novel with a shit ton of scenes that I don't actually WANT to write.

During the entire process, I'll tweak my outline to make sure I'm keeping on track, to add in scenes that become necessary as I write. Sometimes a scene is written out really vaguely. "Do some summer stuff here." or "Conversation with Ann-Marie." and sometimes it's very, very specific.

After I finish a piece, I'll send it out to my beta readers and then I poke my email repeatedly until it cries about inappropriate touching.

A few words about my schedule:

I write a lot of things for submission calls. And, in general, I write between 500 - 1,000 words a day (sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's about my average... when I get closer to the end, my word count often skyrockets). So when I plan things out in my calendar, I count backward from the due date. If this 1,400 - 4k short story is due on March 1st, writing 500 words per day, it's going to take me between 3 and 8 days to write it. I back up 8 days, then I add about 25% more time - so 10 days for this particular piece... and add a few days for revisions... which means if I'm going to do this piece, I need to start NO later than Feb 11th. (I don't write on weekends)

I can frequently write more than one piece at a time, if I need to. When I do that, I'll write 500 words in the morning on one piece, take a break, and then churn out 500 words on the other piece.

My calendar is color coded, blue is for writing fresh stuff, orange for real life commitments, pink for revisions or marketing stuff, yellow for household chores.... I spend a lot of time with highlighter on my fingertips.

So, to continue this trend, next week, I have

Elizabeth L. Brooks

Masquerading by day as an uptight corporate cog, Elizabeth spends her nights concocting gleefully smutty stories. She writes erotic romances for a wide span of worlds, genres, and orientations, and is also a senior editor for Torquere Press. When she's not writing or editing, she loves a wide range of generally nerdy hobbies, including reading, photography, tabletop games, geeky yarncraft, and silly smartphone games. Her safeword is "Oxford comma." You can find her online at http://EveryWorldNeedsLove.blogspot.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/EveryWorldNeedsLove.

V.L. Locey

V.L. Locey loves worn jeans, belly laughs, anything romantic, Greek mythology, New York Rangers hockey,  comic books and coffee. (Not necessarily in that order.) She shares her life with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, a steer named after a famous N.H.L. goalie, and a flock of assorted domestic fowl.

Linkage- http://thoughtsfromayodelinggoatherder.blogspot.com/

A.R. Moler


A.R. Moler is a chemistry professor at a community college, a homeschooling mom and an avid science fiction fan. She is a devotee of first hand research for her writing whenever possible and to this end has - learned to fire a handgun, been rappelling, ridden with both ems and the police, flown a helicopter, bought a motorcycle and learned to ride it. She has traveled to nearly all the places where her stories are set and taken hundreds of photos for documentation. She has been writing since her high school years, but only recently has become published. Her fiction can be be found at torquere press and cobblestone and mlr. Her blog is www.playdohstoichiometry.blogspot.com and is entitled playdoh, legos and stoichiometry. When asked why such a name for her blog, she commented that it reflects 3 of the many phases of her life. Her daughter is 10 years old and was an avid playdoh artist, her son is 14 and owns enough legos is fill a 55-gallon drum and the stoichiometry--one of the most challenging topics to many chemistry students. Her husband's only contribution to chemistry is building rockets.

http://www.armoler.com/Blog.html

Whetting the Appetite

Not the actual cover

As you probably know, Elizabeth L. Brooks and I started a short story project last year. It was a double challenge; the first part of the challenge was "could we write a short story, consistently, every week?" The second part of the challenge was "could I get my words under control enough to write SHORT SHORT stories?"

We were... mostly successful. There were a few weeks that she skipped; a few weeks that I skipped. Life happens. And while I do have... three... stories in the collection that capped out over 2,000 words, most of them are in the under 2k limit. (We originally set a 1,500 word limit, but that I was almost completely incapable of...)

We ended with 46 usable stories. We each had one that got trashed immediately for being depressing as all shit. (Both Liz and I sometimes have some serious self-esteem issues, and independently of each other, we wrote some hideous "I hate myself" pieces...) Around June or so, we got stuck; it didn't seem how much we wrote, we weren't getting any closer to our goal... we wanted at least 40,000 words so the collection could go to print. And then we realized there were some errors in the spreadsheet. Once those were fixed, we had about 56,000 words. Yay us!

We let it sit for a while, then back in October, I started editing Liz's stories. I wanted them off my plate for NaNoWriMo, so they were all done by Nov 1. Liz took a little longer (this is not a complaint, since like I said, Liz works as a professional editor for not one, but two different publishing companies, and she ends up with a crapton of work.) Finally, around the end of December, we got everything edited, back to each other, and did our corrections. We let it sit for another week, then did final edits.

Oddly enough, a few weeks ago, we changed the title. If you might recall, I've been referring to the project as Promptly, or sometimes Promptly Hot, for quite a while... I was doing final read-throughs and while we do have a number of extremely hot sex scenes, we also have a number of stories that stop just outside the bedroom door, leaving you wondering just what's going to happen now. (Although, in the end, I did take my shapeshifters to bed. They were quite insistent... and now THAT story is a bit long for the collection. Oh well... ) So, now it's Whetting the Appetite.

And submitted.

I've only once had a story picked up faster; Pistols & Guns was only "out" for about four hours before I got my acceptance.

Whetting the Appetite was out for less than 24 hours before JMS Books, LLC picked it up.

And, just to make my life fun and interesting; it's going to be released.... in March.

Thanks to everyone who provided writing prompts; we've thanked you officially in the collection as well. (First name, last initial, but you know who you are... I hope. Because if you don't know who you are... well, the IRS is probably mad at you.)

Guest Post and Promo, Elizabeth L. Brooks with her novel, Foxfur

Betas Make It Better

The relationship that Lynn and I have encompasses many things. We've been best friends for more than twenty years. We were roommates for two. We've been writing partners for probably fifteen. I've been her editor for almost everything she's published with Torquere Press over the last couple of years. We've gone on vacation together, joined forces for holidays, and commiserated with each other over our crazy families, broken hearts, and screaming frustrations.

We're also frequently each other's beta readers. And I will say that Lynn is, hands-down, the best beta reader I've ever had. And I'm not just saying that because this is her blog!

(Note from your author: She totally is...)

I had written this book, see. It was pretty bad. The main character was wishy-washy and passive to the point that he didn't even react to things in his own head. The mystery plot was overblown, unlikely, and excessively predictable. The romance was weak. The sex scenes either went too far or not far enough. The resolution was infuriatingly deus ex machina, and the epilogue didn't actually provide any satisfaction -- it left the characters' futures clouded by a huge question mark.

I am often a harsh judge of my own writing (most authors are) but this was just Bad. Bad bad bad. (Lynn, having read it, didn't think it was quite as bad as I did, but she agreed that it was Not Great. And also that its noncon sex scenes made it unpublishable.)

After leaving it in a drawer for, oh, five or so years, I had an idea about how to fix it. It involved a new plot. And a new romantic interest. And a new supporting cast. Also, my main character got a major personality overhaul.

It was, in fact, a brand new story, only linked to the original by the name and profession of the main character and a single simile that I loved so much I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it.

Being the length of either a really long novella or a really short novel, it took me about six months to write. (NaNoWriMo material I am not.)

When I'd finished it, I wasn't very happy with it. And so I did what any reasonable author would do. I sent it to my favorite beta reader (that would be Lynn) and I said, "This sucks, and I can't figure out why. Please tell me, so I can try to fix it."

Lynn messaged me the next morning and said, "I opened it up just to make sure the file wasn't corrupted, and promptly stayed up until two in the morning so I could finish reading it. Now I'm tired and it's all your fault." (One day, Lynn will not be snarky with me and I'll know she's been taken over by bodysnatchers.)

(Never. Gonna. Happen.)

She sent me a more detailed email later in the week, pointing out a few things that did, actually, need some polish, and a couple of contradictions and timeline issues. Which are things that any good beta reader will tell you.

But Lynn is the best, because if it wasn't for her, Foxfur would still be in a drawer, gathering dust while I tried to figure out what was wrong with it. She always gives me the best writing advice. And in this case, that advice was: "Just submit the damn thing, okay?"

If you'd like to check out the book that kept Lynn up until 2 am, you can find it at
Torquere and Amazon


Blurb:

Pleasure-slave Cheng took no particular note of the red-haired woman when she purchased his services, but the morning after her departure, Cheng is taken into custody by the Emperor's own guards, a custody they tell him is for his own protection. Frightened and confused, things go from bad to worse when the investigator is revealed to be one of the rare and terrifying Chained Mages, who explains to Cheng that the red-haired woman was not what she had seemed to be, and that not only Cheng's life, but the lives of everyone around him, depend on their finding her as soon as possible.

The Chained Mage Jin does not like traveling to the country of his birth, where he is at best feared, and at worst, despised. But he can't allow his personal feelings to interfere with his mission without risking the lives of innocents. The lissa (a fox-demon) has placed a spell in Cheng, a spell designed to turn his sexual energy to murderous ends, making Jin's own growing admiration for the slave a greater risk than he's willing to admit. And worst of all, they're not the only hunters on the lissa's trail!

Bio:

Masquerading by day as an uptight corporate cog, Elizabeth spends her nights concocting gleefully smutty stories. She writes erotic romances for a wide span of worlds, genres, and orientations, and is also a senior editor for Torquere Press. When she's not writing or editing, she loves a wide range of generally nerdy hobbies, including reading, photography, tabletop games, geeky yarncraft, and silly smartphone games. You can find her online at http://EveryWorldNeedsLove.blogspot.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/EveryWorldNeedsLove

Cough, Hack

First off, there's This:

Release day for my best friend, Elizabeth L. Brooks, and her first full-length novel, Foxfur.

She's going to be guest posting with me here in a few days (Friday, I think. I've already set up the post and pre-dated it... )

The book should be up at Amazon in a few days... I'll let you know as soon as I know...

This story has hella history, which I'll let you catch up with on Friday, since Liz talked about it.

And in the meanwhile, I'll let you know that this story takes place in the same world as her older novella, Safe Harbor which remains to date one of my favorite stories. (Not my favorite Elizabeth L. Brooks' story, but it is, but one of my favorite ALL TIME stories ever.)

###

So, I took two days off to be completely, horribly ill. (Because OF COURSE I get sick during NaNoWriMo!!) On the plus side, I've been doing the front loading stuff and I'm way ahead of the technical NaNo goal... (Just over 29,000 words at present, and it's only the 13th)

Of course, now I'm "behind" in the reverse NaNo by about 4,000 words... my "plan" is to go ahead and write like I didn't miss those two days. I'm not going to push the hell out of myself and try to "make up" the words and I'm not going to skip ahead in my word goals... today should be 1,953 words, but I'm going to do Monday's word goal instead, 2,183... If I don't go over at all for the next few weeks, it'll mean that my last few days of NaNo are 364 and 231 instead of 116 and 1... Since I'm almost positive that once I start getting into the low 1,000s, I'll probably go waaay over... this shouldn't be a problem.

The only other problem I see coming up is Thanksgiving, that we're spending with my dad and stepmom and my stepmom's extended family, including my stepmom's cousin who works for one of the Big Six publishing houses as a submissions editor. I've never met this cousin, but my stepmom's been trying to introduce us for a while. I'm a little nervous; one because I've read so many articles from the Big Six sneering down at small and indie publishers. And two, because it's quite possible that she's one of those "ew, erotica" people. I dunno, haven't met her. But I am not about to let someone sneer at my publishing houses or the kind of work that I do, since I love my job and the people I work with...

On the other hand, my stepmom says that she is specifically looking for Steampunk writers, and I do have the outline for Wormwood Trade hanging about, so... yeah, like what I need to do is have a third novel to write in 2014.... sure. Good plan.

Also, I'm working with the lovely and talented Author Rue Volley for my cover-art for Pistols & Guns, which will be coming out at the end of the month, so lots of excitement there...

The other 90%

I just finished writing a ghost story that I sort of impulse wrote.

And now I'm looking at what my next - still? - projects are.

I have to finish Roll, another 4,500 words should polish that off. And eventually SOME of my beta readers might get back to me with suggestions or comments. Ahem hem!

I have 2 months to finish Blood Sight, a vampire novel that I wrote about a year or so back, probably another 10,000 words to add and polish up.

Plus I have a novel's worth of short stories to sort through, edit, select, read and review for the Promptly Hot collection I'm working on with Liz.

So, I will finish my shit.

I will finish my shit.

I will finish my shit.

Guest Post, Elizabeth L. Brooks

What are your biggest pet peeves for other people's grammar? Are there any mistakes that you find yourself making regularly?

The one that makes me want to get up and leave the room when I hear it is a contraction I've only really heard in the last few years, in which people leave "to be" out of verb clauses. For instance: "The
dishes need washed," instead of "the dishes need to be washed." It actually gives me the shudders. If the extra two words are really that much extra effort, you can get away with the gerund: "The dishes need
washing."

My own besetting grammatical sin is commas. I'm terrible with them. I leave them out when they should be there, or put them in where they're superfluous. Even knowing that I do this doesn't help; I'll second-guess myself, and then end up getting it wrong on the few occasions I would've gotten it right to start with.

Do you ever want to go back and edit an older story?

GOD, yes, all the time. I try not to even look at older stories sometimes, because I know I'm going to find things that need to be
fixed, and not be allowed to do so, and it's painful.


How much of your life and the people you know end up in your work?

I think it's impossible to avoid injecting some amount of one's own
experience into writing. Even when I'm trying to imagine something
completely new to me -- the telepathic connection that occurs in the
"One Mind" books, for instance, or the experience of shape-changing in "What You Are" -- I'm pulling on my experiences of things I've done or read or felt that might be similar, to enable me to describe what I can only imagine.

That said, I do try to avoid being too obvious about it. I'll extract
a particular feeling, or a gesture, or (rarely) a few particularly well-chosen words. I try to avoid doing more than that, because I wouldn't want my friends or romantic partners (past or present) to recognize themselves in a scene I've written and wonder: is that really how I acted? does that mean the other character in the scene
represents her? is this really how she saw that event? is this how she sees our relationship?

I do have to admit one exception: Jesse Summers, from "Assumption of Desire", is in fact based on a real person, an adorable twink that I met at a GLBT Pride event. He helped me and some other editor/authors
break down our tents and tables and schlepp everything back to our cars at the end of the event, and in payment, I offered to write him into my next story. I make no claims that the character Jesse's
personality is anything like the real Jesse's, but physically, he's an exact copy.

Is there a character or story that's stuck in your head and won't leave, from either your work or someone else's?

Oh, yes. Dawn moved into my head some eleven years ago (his initial appearance was almost *exactly* eleven years ago, actually), and he hasn't left since, despite going through several incarnations in the meantime. I thought publishing "Safe Harbor" would exorcise him, but it's only made him dig in deeper.

What projects are you currently working on? Are you willing to share a small excerpt from a work in progress?

My most promising project, at the moment, is the one I'm working on
with you, actually. For your readers who may not have been paying
attention: we're each writing a short-short (1000 words or less,
usually) each week, generally in response to some generously donated
prompt words.  I post excerpts fairly regularly on my blog, but here's one just for you and your readers:

What was taking him so long?

Finally, she heard his tread on the stairs. “Babe?”

“Second thoughts, already?” He wasn't even in the room yet, but she could hear the amusement in his voice.

“I just want to know what you have in mind.”

He appeared, sat next to her on the bed. He combed his fingers through her hair, spreading it out around her. “You remember your words?”

“Of course.” She'd chosen them herself, and he'd repeated them four times, as he'd fastened each of the restraints at her wrists and ankles.

He stroked her face, traced the line of her throat, outlined her collarbones. “Are you using them?”

She hesitated. His fingers felt good on her skin... “No. I just want to know.”

He smiled, kissed her lightly. “Then no.”

As a note: Elizabeth is running a contest to win an adorable tentacled minor god of your very own. Go to her blog and leave a comment, or her Facebook page and tell her what color octopus you want.

This one is mine. You can't have it!

Snippet

Seriously, I have a problem.

I've mentioned, I'm sure, that Elizabeth L. Brooks (the fabulous editor of He Loves me for my Brainsss!) and I are working on a collection of short-short stories.

When we originally discussed the idea, we were thinking of maybe 40 stories in the sub 1,000 word length.

(You, over there in the third row? I hear you laughing. Shut up. Seriously. Shut it.)

Thus far, I've written nine stories for the project.

They are:

After the Party - 1,016
Two Tents* - 933
Mouse Games* - 1,355
Away Games - 370
Home Inspection - 1,064
On the Job Training - 1,679
Dinner Service* - 811
Steal Not a Moment - 1,466
Surrender - 1,108

The stories with * asterisks next to them mean that the story isn't really complete. At least with Two Tents, I've got another two parts of similar length to go before I consider the story complete. Dinner Service has another two parts, Drink Service and Kitchen Service, ditto on them being the same length. Ish. I really want to steal Home Inspection, write another 1,500 words or so, and submit it for a collection. Also, Surrender isn't quite done yet either. I dunno about that one, I think I need to go back and fix some of it.

Even though I've managed to cut down my writer's bloat a bit (did I mention that my first novel, which is currently in content edits) was over 190,000 words as a first draft? My second novel, which is currently being read/reviewed for publication, is only 80,000... ) I'm still fighting a LOT with the short-short.

That being said, I really like some of these stories a lot, and I think the exercise is good for me. I might not be the short-short queen or anything, but at least in the process of working on this collection, I will get better. And that's all anyone can ask, right?

Here's a sample from On the Job Training...

“I'm Noel,” she said. 

A thousand puns and jokes leapt immediately to mind, and he bit down on all of them. It was unlikely that he could make a fresh one, and no one ever appreciated those sorts of things anyway. “It's a pleasure to meet you.” That was safe enough.

Noel raised an eyebrow. “Very good. I admire your restraint. You said, earlier... it was 'mostly.' Now, adorable as my shoes are, I have to say that if you're after a cheap one-night stand, please go elsewhere. You seem interesting enough, and I'm certainly not adverse, but I have strict requirements, and I'd rather you not waste your money if you're not qualified for the position.”

“Lucid's not cheap,” Danny chipped in from over his shoulder. “So it would be an expensive one night stand.”

“Not helping me here, bro,” Chandler muttered.

Noel laughed. It wasn't a titter, a giggle, or one of those fake chortles that he was used to hearing from women in bars. It was an absolutely delighted guffaw, full on belly-laugh that shook her whole body in delightful ways and was infectious. He couldn't help answering it. He blushed, embarrassed, felt more embarrassed, having blushed, and still couldn't help laughing. 

“Oh, that was wonderful,” she said, blotting carefully at the corners of her eyes with a napkin, leaving small red smudges behind. “What do you think, Danny? Is he worthy?”

Oh, god. He finished the rest of his beer.

“He drinks good beer,” Danny said, “even when his friends aren't here, so he actually likes it. He's not just showing off his hefty paycheck or his fancy palate. He plays darts a few times a month. In fact, I was expecting his crew in tonight. Responsible, too. I've never had to take his keys. And he remembers to tip.”

Chandler stared at the bartender. Really? He'd noticed that much? Suddenly Chandler felt about eight years old, being scolded for forgetting to write a thank you note, or for licking the butter knife, or any of the dozens of faux pas he'd committed in front of his grandmother. He felt the urge, however briefly, to just say never mind, pay for his beer and leave. 

If he did that, though, it was doubtful he'd ever be back. Not after having such a personal witness. Oh, well. He took a deep breath, met her cool, curious gaze. If he was going down, it'd be spectacular, and in flames.

Marscon 2013

This weekend upcoming is the annual Marscon science fiction/fantasy convention.

If you've never been to a sci-fi convention, I can't really recommend them highly enough. If you're a sci-fi geek, of course, and if the idea of being stuck in an elevator with a Klingon doesn't bother you. Sci-fi geeks run the gamut of weirdos. (Altho, to be perfectly honest, I only know a few geeks who are actually Sheldon levels of intolerable assholes.) But a sci-fi con is a great excuse to let your geek flag fly...

I usually go for the music - as you all know, I'm a huge fan of filking and supernatural folk music. There will be several performers there - Jonah Knight, Mikey Mason, Poison Dwarf, the Blithering Humdingers... and the writing workshops. This year, my editor Kristina Wright, and my fellow writer and best friend Elizabeth Brooks will be sitting erotica panels... so that should be fun!

The husband brought home print-outs of the schedule yesterday. Three copies.

He gave one copy to me, one to the kiddo, and kept one. Over the week, we're going to look at the schedule (there's almost 30 damn pages!!) and figure out what we want to do, what we can do, and what we will do. Having to juggle the kiddo back and forth, since she really can't go to a writing panel for writing about alien sex... (No, really! There's a panel for that!! And yes, I'm planning to go.)

Marscon has the huge benefit of 1) assuming that geeks are also old 2) and that they've actually managed to carry on conversations and relationships long enough that 3) they've had babies. 4) those babies are likely also geeks

There's a HUGE amount of family friendly programming and stuff specifically aimed at the younger geeks in the crowd.

The husband is taking Friday off so that we can leave as soon as the kiddo gets home from school (driving up to the peninsula can be horridly time-consuming) and the kid's got Monday off for MLK-day. So I might not get a lot of work done.

That being said, this whole sitting down in front of my computer for several hours with the stated agenda of Getting Shit Done seems to be remarkably more productive than I might have imagined.

Captive of My Desires, Johanna Lindsey cover
Artist: Alan Ayers

Yesterday I wrote almost 2,000 words.

It's been quite a while since I've been that productive. I wasn't tracking my word count very carefully last year, but I don't think I've had a day like that in a while. I wrote 1,200 words on my steampunk-vampire story, took a break, then came back upstairs and wrote about 600 words on Full Frontal Neighbor.

While making dinner, I thought about how to move the story along, and I head-worked a pretty good conversation between my main character and her best friend... much like me and my best friend, they're both in the novel business, but Claire, the best friend, is an editor and publisher. Mallory, the main character, is an artist. She's the one who paints the cover art...

And I was so determined not to forget the line that after dinner, I went back upstairs and wrote another 400 words or so, just so I could get to that conversation.

Here, enjoy a small snippet...

“Well, I have three covers. How’s your time? Can you do three in a month?”

“I have a couple in the drawer, that I painted just for funsies. Maybe one of those would fit. Otherwise, I got time for two. I’m still knee deep in the moving-in process. Stupid movers lost half my stuff and I’m just now getting it back.”

“You said. Which reminds me, your ex was poking about. Asked the new girl where you were living. She didn’t know, so she didn’t tell him. That guy just does not take no for an answer.”

“Tell me about it,” I grumbled. “I had to move back east to get away from him.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I wasn’t above blaming David for just about everything. It was one of my less attractive traits, but at the moment, I wasn’t worried about it. Claire hated him almost as much as I did. Neighbor boy stretched magnificently, and I stood there, silent in the darkness, watching him in all his masculine glory. There was a delicate, not quite unpleasant, ache between my legs. At least David had been good for one thing.

“… and I’ve got one collection of short stories about shape-changers,” Claire said. I drew my attention back to the conversation.

“Werewolves?” Great. I hated painting werewolves. Readers all had their own ideas of what lycanthropes should be, and inevitably, anything I painted would be all wrong for two-thirds of them.

“No, just shape-changers. Some of them turn into cats, or foxes. I think one of the stories has a guy who turns into a weasel.”

“All men turn into weasels, eventually.”

--Full Frontal Neighbor

Doing this thing...

When Jonah was here for my house concert, he did a lot of patter and talking between song sets. I personally found this fascinating and almost better than the songs themselves. I mean, I like the songs, don't get me wrong, but to me the best part of a concert is getting to know the artist a little better.

(On one of my first not-quite-dates with the husband - aside, I was dating someone else at the time, but husband tagged along with us, and I sat between the two men, and both me and the husband consider the concert fondly and part of several long-standing personal jokes. Ok, when is this aside going to end? - we went to see Spin Doctors, Gin Blossoms and Cracker in concert. With some weird flavor of the month drummer named Vince performing in between. He was terrible. Just so you know. I don't think I've ever, ever seen a more terrible musical act, and that includes the 2nd grade piano recitals that I've been dragged to. No one should ever be dragged to those who loves music and is not related to the performers. Anyway, Cracker was very, very tired of being on tour and tried to get the audience cheering about them only having four more days until their tour was over. The audience, needless to say, was unimpressed. I mean, I'm sorry they were tired, I really, really am, but we paid just as much for our tickets as the people in Vancouver who were their 2nd tour stop, so we felt a little ripped off. Or at least I did. And I never, ever bought another Cracker album. I'm sure that, financially speaking, this didn't hurt them any... but it just goes to show you... knowing how to talk to your audience is IMPORTANT.)

Ok... now that my cold medicine has had it's say in my morning...

What the hell was I talking about? Oh! Right.

Jonah said, "The thing about doing this for a while is that I get to begin a lot of stories with 'well, it was the first time I did this...' and then tell an interesting story about the first time I wrote a song about a ghost. Or the first time I performed a song cover. Or the first time a political group in Germany wrote me to ask if they could use my music as a rallying soundtrack."

I've been doing this writing gig for a while now. And the publishing gig for almost two years. Well, two years in May. So I'm starting to collect my own set of "firsts."

The first week on the "trying to treat this writing thing like an actual job..." I had to take my first sick day.

Really, that just doesn't sound like a cool story. But my whole house has the flu. Like, the actual flu. Not man-flu or a bad cold, but actual influenza. Really? I didn't know people actually got the flu anymore... I thought it was just what people said when they had a cold and wanted to feel like they deserved to take some time off. (Personally, I believe that having a cold is damn miserable and we SHOULD take sick days for that, but for whatever reason, "society" has decided that "just a cold" is "wimping out." Whatev.)

Despite that, I got a story out the door last night... so, there's that. I also finished up my first ultra-short for the collection Elizabeth L. Brooks and I are working on together. (So did she. So, since those are "due" each Wednesday, we're both ahead of schedule. Yay!)

I've talked over my ideas for a story with Liz and agreed to beta read and help her edit her story in a few weeks.

I've put together a couple of guest posts for this blog - they'll start airing on January 17th and right now I have a guest blogger every Thursday until March 7th, so that's cool.

In the meanwhile, I need to get lots of rest and drink lots of fluids and not kill the other two sick people in my house because we're all exceptionally cranky.

Because really... killing someone would be a first. So would going to prison, but I think I'll give it a miss.

My First "Work Week"

Here I am.

This was a half-week - the husband was on vacation until the 1st. On Wednesday, everyone went back to work or school. Yeah, that was fun. I live in a house full of sloths. I kept trying to convince both (or either) of them that they needed to start thinking about, MAYBE, going to bed early and getting up somewhere in the actual A.M.

Yeah, right.

So, I had to make schedule adjustments, but I got a lot done this week.

Wrote a little over 1,500 words, took care of a lot of blog administrative stuff, including writing up author interviews (I'm going to start hosting other writers on my blog, generally on Thursdays, starting the 17th of January...) and getting slots set up. I still have one slot open, the 21st of February. (Which happens to be my 15th anniversary!)

I got some prompts for the ultra-short collection, and I've written the first one. Liz and I talked about it and we're going to set up Wednesdays as our "due dates" for the stories; which is to say we need to give them to each other by Wednesday. I'm ahead for the week, since this one's not due until the 9th. How about them apples?

So, my first short-short, written from Jeannie's prompt... was finished yesterday, wrapping up at ~1,000 words. And I worked about an hour of "over-time."

(I'm going to mark that down somewhere, so that when I end up cleaning frantically, or have something to do or just do NOT feel like going "in to work" today, I have a built up bank of extra hours...)