Howling Bitch

So, Howling Bitch is out today...

And you can buy it here from Amazon

It's the sequel to last year's Blood Sight. The books are not entirely stand-alone, and it will improve your reading experience if you take them as a series, but if you don't, I mostly sum-up, and you don't HAVE to read Blood Sight...

'Blurb

Life's a bitch... and then there's Taite. 

Nico Marrone was never the plays-nicely-with-others type. When doing the wrong thing for the right reasons costs him a cushy spot with the Paranormal Police, Nico takes up the only other work he's trained for; supernatural bounty hunting. Called to the far north to find the daughter of a preacher, abducted by creatures unknown, Nico finds himself rapidly in over his head. A desperate mistake leads him into an uneasy alliance with a wild and beautiful lycanthrope, Taite Julien. Can he win her love before she discovers his secrets? 

Otherwise known as Howling Bitch, Taite is just doing her job. Driven by history and duty, the lycans have always protected the innocent from demonic schemes. Bitch races against the legions of Hell to find answers and prevent a literal Hell on Earth. Bound together by prophecy, entangled by forbidden desire, can Bitch and Nico rescue the girl, liberate Taite's people, and maybe even save the world. Or will the truth cost her everything, even her soul? 

Check it out, it's a howling good read.

And join tonight's release party on Facebook for a chance to win prizes, free copies of the books, read some excerpts, etc...

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...

Howling Bitch Cover

So, this happened this week....

I'll post the blurb as soon as I finish writing it.

But that Happened Last Year

So, the contract for Blues - offered last week - has been signed. That's moving forward. It'll probably be a few weeks before I have a tentative publication date... altho Torquere is pretty good about not moving the date too much after it's set. In any case, like everything, I'll let you know when I know more details. I've already selected a cover image and I'm ready to go with a lot of the administrative stuff (marketing plans, blurb, back of the book blurb, etc) that I know they'll want from me... helps to have been working with the same publisher for a while. I already know what's expected from me.

Yesterday I was working on Classic, which is book three. It is not the final book of the series, but it is the last book in which Beau and Vin will be main characters. Punked Up will be fronted by Ann-Marie, although at least the first few chapters will have Beau and Vin in them... from the bits of story I have worked on so far, Punked Up will take place about two years after Beau graduates from college. (Classic covers his junior year...)

All that Jazz, which will be told primarily from Hector's point of view, will probably have the boys in cameo roles, and I'm not sure of the timeline just yet. I have a few scenes for that book planned out, but since Hector was already graduated and an "adult" during Roll, he's not as much with the college crowd as Beau and Vin.

Anyway, I was writing Classic, and I did about 1,200 words or so, finished Chapter Two which I may need to go back in and re-write because I sometimes make Vin's grandparents a lot more awful than I want them to be. They are a little awful, and terribly clueless, but they're not abusive, as they sometimes come across in a rough draft. After which, as I tend to do, I posted my word count on my Facebook page.

(side note: I have a real life friend who will not "like" my author page because she hates word counts, step counts, pounds lost, or any other sort of public progress tracking that people do. I'm never quite sure how I feel about this. Conflicted.)

A few minutes after the post went up, I got a somewhat frantic-sounding message from a fan "Did I miss book 2?"

There's a very strange disconnect between writing, editing, and the book actually ending up in a reader's hands.

Just to give you an example of the timeline; in 2013, I started writing Roll in April. I finished it by the second week of June, did the revision in July/August and submitted it at the end of August/beginning of September. I then spent September and October doing a revision of Blood Sight. And November, I started writing Blues. I wrote the majority of the novel during NaNoWriMo and completed the finishing touches in January (taking most of December for vacation and real life stuff...)

Blues was finished its rough draft before I did final edits for Roll.

Roll came out in February 2014, about 10 months after I started writing it. Because I am now balancing two (and possibly three) different novel series, the timeline has altered a bit.

I ended up waiting until June to start the second draft of Blues and sent it in on the 26th of June. It was about 30 days between submission and contract, which is a good turn around.

But for me, stuff that happened in Blues happened in my mental map of last year. I accidentally spoilered a friend of mine on the book because I was so excited about starting Classic that I said "Oh, yeah, well, after the thing with <redacted>, Vin's going to <redacted> and then..." in my mind, Blues is the past and Classic is the now. She said, "What? When did <redacted>? Jeez, spoiler much?"

Oh. Right. Sorry.

Anyway, my current schedule looks like this:

• Write Classic (tentatively finish around the 1st of October...)
• Start looking over the short stories for Coming Together:Among the Stars (August 15th - Sept 30th) Yes, I realize this runs consecutively with writing Classic, but it should be okay, since I'm just in the selection process here...
• Second draft of Howling Bitch in October
• November (NaNoWriMo) write Sins of Angels
• Edit Wanted Woman in December (assuming that A Marked Man is picked up, because there's no point in editing book 2 if book 1 doesn't have a home yet...)
• Also, edit and compile stories for Coming Together during December, turn in.
• January 2015, finish writing Sins of Angels if it's not done yet
• February get in final edits of Howling Bitch for publication in March

At some point, I may wish to get a life...

Eagerly Awaited Sequels

It's official. Roll's sequel, Blues, has been accepted for publication.

I'm not sure of the timeline at present; last year, I submitted Roll at the tail end of August for a February publication date; this year I've submitted Blues at the end of June... we'll see where I fit in on the calendar. I'll let y'all know as soon as I know.

Here's the rough draft 'blurb

College is supposed to be about finding yourself. Sometimes, you lose everything else. Rising sophomore Beau Watkins gave up everything to be with his boyfriend, Vin Reyes. Beau is disowned by his father, tormented by his brother, is rapidly running out of money, and suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. On top of that, his boyfriend seems to see him as little more than a live-in maid. 

Troubled by word of his missing father and fighting nightmares of his own, Vin turns to alcohol to drown his pain. What's worse, a handsome transfer student is a little too interested in Beau. When Vin and Beau's happily-ever-after turns into a train wreck of drinking problems, resentment, insecurity, jealousy, and violence, they both try to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. 

I already have an idea of what I want the cover to look like, so that should be easy enough.

For fans, I'll let you know a few secrets:

- Vin's family plays a much greater role in Blues, letting readers get a glimpse of the past, plus the reasons why his grandparents kept everything hidden from him.
- Beau discovers one of the reasons college sucks; you still have to keep your grades up while dealing with emotional turmoil.
- There are a few scenes where the ever-popular Hector has the spotlight, paving the way toward Hector's own novel, All That Jazz
- Ann-Marie fans will be happy to see that she has as big a role as ever; helping to keep her friends centered and stable. She's an extraordinarily strong woman, not in the Hollywood, shoot-first and never-ask-questions way, but smart, practical, and there for her friends. She also has her own novel coming up, Punked Up.
- I've already started work on the third book in the main trilogy, Classic, which will follow Beau off to a semester abroad...

The Schedule:

The plan is to finish Classic by mid to late September, then go back and edit Howling Bitch (book 2, Demoniac Codex) which will be published by Vamptasy on March 17th. That will bring me through... I should be done with that by the end of October, so then I'll set NaNoWriMo aside for writing Sins of Angels, Demoniac Codex, Book Three.

In the meanwhile, because I am horribly crazy, I've dragged out an old drawer story, Marked Man, and edited it thoroughly. I sent it off to a publisher, divided into two novels (the original draft of Marked Man was over 180,000 words, which is 3 times as long as Roll, just for point of reference.) I cut out some extraneous material and divided the remainder into two 75,000 word novels, A Marked Man and A Wanted Woman, under the series title The Forging of Souls.

Here's the rough blurb for book one, A Marked Man

Bastian Hooke, known to the underworld as Mace, is an assassin and a thief. He was the last person expected to carry out great deeds. But comes the Seeress with her prophecy and a sack of gemstones, and Bastian finds himself thrown headfirst into a quest he cannot possibly understand. Sought by a dark sorcerer, surrounded by secrets and lies on all sides, he is charged with the protection of the last of the dragonslayers... the very last thing he meant to do was fall in love.

Catreen An'dello has been divorced from her soul for ten years. Betrayed by her former lover to the dragon, imprisoned inside a living statue and nearly driven mad, she wishes nothing more than to forget. Desperate to ease her guilt and soothe her pain, Catreen drives a demon's bargain with the man who saved her soul. 

Can an assassin and a dragonslayer find the strength of will to save the kingdom from destruction?

The plan - provided, of course, that my publisher is interested in this book - is to release both books a few months apart, so Part One in, say,  July 2015, and then Part Two in November of that same year. (those are example dates, as the novel hasn't been accepted yet... )

That'll put me at December, and I'll probably take a few weeks off to do holiday stuff. I have a number of short stories slated for fall publication, including Fair Games, my first independent lesbian story. I'm pretty excited about this one, it'll be in the sequel to Duty & Desire, which is entitled For Love of a Soldier.

* fact about Fair Games, the introduction scene is taken almost verbatim from something that happened to me, quite a number of years ago....

So, that's me and my writing schedule up to the end of the year...

Other things; 

I'm doing my first publisher sponsored book-signing in September! Rose Caraway, Kristina Wright, and I will be at The Fountainhead Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia on the 19th, from 12:30 - 2:30 pm. If you're local to Richmond, please stop by, I'd love to meet fans. I'm very excited about this...

After that, I'm going to the Mid-Atlantic Erotica Writer's Retreat for the weekend, which will involve a lot of wine, a lot of erotica writers, and probably NOT a lot of actual writing... (I'm also bringing my Cards Against Humanity Deck... and seriously thinking about bringing a video recorder, because honestly, someone should film that...)

At some point, Rose is doing audiobooks for all of us who are writing for Sexy Librarian, which will include my zombie short story, Dead in the Water. I'll post that link as soon as it's available, because y'all want to hear that. (especially my friend Elliot, who has been nagging me for YEARS to read my work out loud... which you don't want me to do because I suck at reading out loud.)

Oh, and the deadline for submitting a sci-fi erotica story is coming up Real Soon Now, so if you're interested in doing that, please, please get on it!

Current Events

It's been a busy couple of months for me, and there's really no end in sight... my writing schedule puts me for - and this is just stuff I have planned, contracted, or verbally agreed to with publishers - booked up mostly solid until 2017.

Yikes!

But, in the meanwhile...

Building Us will be released by Torquere Press on June 18th.

Antho blurb: In “Building Us,” by Lynn Townsend, Eric and Temple discover that, for want of a nail, a ring is lost...

Two-Line blurb: Construction foreman, Eric, wants to build more than just a house with his steady boyfriend, Temple. But can Temple convince Eric that it's the relationship, and not the ring, that matters most?

Marketing Blurb: As a construction foreman, Eric knows how to build a house. What he's uncertain of is how to build a life, now that he's finally found the man he wants to spend his with. Temple, a university professor with a stack of erudite publications as long as his – arm – has always played the single's game, until he met Eric.

Will a roof-top proposal lead to “I do” or will the whole thing fall apart when Eric can't put a ring on it?

In case you don't know, and because I do this publishing bouncehouse thing I often can't advertise publications at one house in publications from another house, "Building Us" is the sequel story to "Home Inspection" which can be found in my collection Whetting the Appetite. The two stories have the same lead characters and Building Us picks up with Eric and Temple about a year after they first got together.

This story also contains some of the hottest m/m I've written thus far.

Thing(s) Two:

I've had some guest spots around the blogosphere, first stop was with All Romance cafe as part of their LGBT pride month, where I talk about being the silent B....

Then I dropped in to raise up interest in an older story, Synchronous Rotations, on Guys Like Romance, Too...

And I've got a full length interview coming up June 18th with SSLY Reading Room (Smile, Somebody Loves You!)

Thing Three:

I took a two-week vacation during the middle of May to seriously hate on my story. That happens, sometimes. Which sort of sucked, since I wanted to be done with Howling Bitch's first draft by June 1st. On the plus side, I did some plot work with Elizabeth Brooks (Honestly, if she and my husband didn't spark on each other wrong after about 12 hours, I'd just marry the girl and get on with my life, because I don't know how I'd live without her. And that would be easier if she was in the same house. Oh well.) and managed to get past the hurdle. Yesterday, between the morning where I got in about 3 hours of work, then in the evening, I tapped out another 2 hours, I finally finished the damn thing and wrote The End.

So, Howling Bitch is finished. Which is GOOD because it's contracted already with Vamptasy, and will be published March 17th? 18th? I'd have to check my contract, but it's mid-March of 2015. Which seems like a long time, but to me, it was just March '14 like 10 minutes ago!

I'm going to let it sit for a week or so, then go back and poke some of the plot issues that need to be massaged into place, add a bit in the middle, and then I'll send it out to my beta readers.

Thing Four:

Which means I'll be getting back to Chicago and the Rainbow Connection boys. Blues was written and finished back in Dec/Jan ish, and has been with my beta readers for a while now. I've gotten some good feedback. This novel has not been hit by the "god, I hate my own work" bug - the boys still talk to me regularly. Well, Vin actually yells at me a lot.

The plan is to edit Blues for the rest of this month and then send it in... eh, maybe mid-July?

At which point I'll be ready to start writing Book Three, Classic. (writerly aside, I've already written the opening chapter because I seriously cannot get people to shut. up. And the first chapter of Punked Up has ALSO been written. At the MOMENT, All That Jazz and Punked Up are still looking like 20 - 30,000 word novellas and I'll release them as one book.) And I may write a bonus short story, because right now, there's a scene in my head - and it's important! - that doesn't fit in the timeline of any of the novels.

And that's ... mostly it, that for the time being.

I've got a writer's retreat in September (not a fan/marketing event, but a networking/chat/drinking/writing event) that I'm looking forward to.

And then as fall starts, I have several short stories that will come out; Fair Game in Kristina Wright's For Love of a Soldier, Full Frontal Neighbor in the Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica, and Living Proof with Antimatter Press's Local Magic.

Somewhere in there, I also need to edit and do another word cut of Marked Man, my fantasy romance - I have tentative interest from one of my publishers with that, provided I can slice out another 20,000 words or so from that monstrosity... I may take another look at the rough and see if there's a "good place" to split it in half, because it's currently around 130,000 words, give or take, which would make 2 novels, and maybe we could release them 3 months apart, or something... I dunno, something to think about.

And then I'll want to write Sins of Angels, which is Book 3 of the Demoniac Codex series...

Yeah, busy writer is busy...

A month of Crazy

And my reward?

To spend the next month finishing the wretched thing.

I'm a little over 50,000 words, and I *think* the novel's going to end up being another 25,000 words or thereabouts... maybe more.

I've got the Blues...

So there's that!

50,040 words is my "official" count for Blues. I'm about halfway through Chapter 21 and according to my outline, I have about five and a half chapters left to go... that's ish 11,000 - 13,500 more words (most of my chapters have this weird tendency to be right around 2,200 - 2,400 words. I'm not sure why, that just seems to be how it works out. (It's an average. I promise, I don't mold the chapters into that exact format.)

I've been going through my writer's list recently; just because I have finished NaNoWriMo doesn't mean I have... you know, spare time and shit.

I need to:

• spend a few days at my dad's farm for the holidays
• finish writing the end of Mouse Games (I left my poor characters in the middle of a fairly intense bondage scene when NaNo started)
• re-write Down with the Ship
• do my marketing piece for Roll
• buy and decorate a Christmas Tree
• have a Christmas Party
• get my daughter new glasses, shoes, cute outfit
• go shopping for the midwinter spending holiday
• edit all 25 short stories for Promptly (pending delivery of edits)
• start work on my Cover Art Request for Roll
• write a Ghost Story, due Jan 15th
• edit Blood Sight (pending delivery of edits)
• Finish Blues (technically "due" sometime in summer 2014)
• start writing Howling Bitch (due sometime fall 2014)
• prep for Pistols & Guns release date

Yep. Busy writer is busy.

I'm still trying to block out a schedule to actually finish Blues, but at the moment, it looks like I'm going to leave the boys hanging until mid-January... my "plan" (and believe me, I say that with heavy finger quotes and eyerollies) is to claim it as "due" by February 10th. That way I don't let it sit too long... and then after that, I'll spend a few months writing up Howling Bitch. If I work on the schedule that I managed with Roll (April - August) then I should be able to get done with Howling Bitch by about July. Maybe sooner, as I'm really starting to get my feet under me in terms of production.

While I really don't actually enjoy doing NaNoWriMo, I have to say the demanding word counts do... sort of work for me. I can really produce if I feel like I have to. What I might do is set myself a three month schedule (especially keeping in mind that I wrote Roll while also producing one short story every week, which I will NOT be doing this year)

Because - annoyingly enough - The Wormwood Trade has started to get very demanding about why am I not writing it, why why why?

Honestly, I need more time and less life in my life.

Before I Leave

So... I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year.

I was having this conversation quite a while ago with one of my editors, in which I was laying out my to-write list.

This year I've written Roll, revised it, and sent it in. Got it accepted, it's the first of three (maybe five... both Hector and Ann-Marie, who are side characters, are clamoring for their own stories...) novels expected out of the series, with the second being Blues, and the third being Classic.

I've also revised and finished Blood Sight, my NaNo project from 2011... and it's also been accepted. Aaaand it's the first in a series of four novels; Howling Bitch, Demon Halo, and Ghost Magic rounding out THAT series...

(Both of these novels have been accepted and will be available in early 2014, end of February for Roll and sometime mid-march for Blood Sight...)

To which my editor said to me, in all seriousness, "You realize you've committed yourself to writing two novels a year for the next two to three years, right?"

Um.... well.

Yes.

Except while I knew that math, I didn't really add it all up. Just what I'd soft-committed to. (There's some sort of unwritten rule that, as a novelist with a series title, you have to put out one book in the series every year... it's not written in stone, but it may as well be, loud as some people scream - me included! - when they don't get their annual Harry Dresden fix; or Game of Thrones, or WHATEVER... )

On the other hand, I wrote a novel, a longish short story (Synchronous Rotations), edited two novels (Marked Man is still out there floating around... ), 25 short stories for the Promptly collection, and a handful of other short stories (My Girlfriend's Gun, Tanked, Blood Cries Up, Pistols & Guns, aaand I'm sure I'm forgetting something....) this year.

(Wow, that was parenthetical...)

So. I can do this. I really can.

But I do know it's going to be challenging.

It took me from April until mid-July to write the 60,000 words that became Roll. (and while I was doing that, I wrote at least one short story every week) And it took me November 2012, and most of September to write the 60,000 words that became Blood Sight.

We'll see if I complete the NaNoWriMo challenge again this year. But even if I don't, it'll give me a headstart on those two novels I need to write....

I probably won't be here on my blog much in the meanwhile. But I do post regularly to Facebook so if you want to see what I have to say, pop over there and take a peek. Also, I'll probably be posting daily word counts to Twitter for November.