Sooo busy

It's funny, in a way. I get so busy actually working that I don't write blog entries.

I've been working really hard to get ready for Coming Together: Strange Shifters. (I wish I did cover art, because we still don't have any and I need some, but I'm a terrible graphics editor)

I've gotten all my stories edited and most of them returned, so I'm doing the final check-through for 16 of them and getting them mapped out in the anthology file.

I've written two short stories in the last two weeks, which has to be some sort of record, for me, at least. One of them is about 7,000 words and I wrote it from scratch, starting on the 10th and I finished it Tuesday, so 12 days. The other was half-finished a while back, I started it in February of 2014, and for reasons that I can't recall, never finished it. Then, this morning, I saw a story call and thought "did I ever finish that... no, no I didn't." I dug up the file, pulled it out, read it, decided it was actually fairly good and would meet the requirements for the call nicely.

I figured it would take me a week or so to finish it off, but no, apparently something started turning in my head and I cranked out almost 3,000 words today, did some quick editing, and sent it off to the publisher.

According to my calendar, on Monday I'll start writing my Twisted Fairy Tale story, which I'm calling Small Problems, and is a Tom Thumb m/m story.

For some reason, I decided that I'll try to write a short story for every one of Torquere's anthology calls for 2016. They have rather a lot of topics that I think I can work with. (I'm pretty sure I won't, actually, get all of them, but I might get at least seven done, and that's more short stories than I've done in a while... I think. I don't know, I lose track a lot...)

October will see me finishing off the Strange Shifters anthology -- the current anticipated publication date is October 31st, but if we don't get a cover soon, I'm concerned. (Do you have mad cover design skills? Want to donate some time? Please contact Alessia Brio at erotic.cocktail at gmail dot com for more information!) and writing a short story about Irish dancing. I have't decided much about that short story yet, but I do have some friends who do Irish dancing who've agreed to help me with the technical details...

And then I'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. I'm not what you'd call the best NaNo person, but I do want to finish writing All that Jazz by hopefully the end of this year, for fall publication of next year.

After that, I'll get Sins of Angels back from my betas and finish edits on that...

Which takes me through the end of the year...

Busy Writer is Busy

Got my projected publication date for A Marked Man.... which is late December, so I will have four novels (or collections) published this year. I'm still not quite sure when the Coming Together: Among the Stars will be headed to print because I've never done this sort of anthology before. I suspect a lot of it depends on me. How long it takes to finish selecting, how long it takes me to get contracts back, how long it takes me to do the edits and have everything ready....

(As a side note, if you're working on a submission for this collection, the deadline is, theoretically, Friday. But as I'm reading the submissions in the order that they came in, if you send me yours late, I'll just put it at the bottom of the stack. Once I reach the bottom of the stack, then I'm done... query me if you're going to be later than that.)

I still don't know publication date for Blues and I am told that Torquere works only a few months out in terms of the calendar.

So far, my schedule looks pretty crazy:

August / September

• Read and select stories for Coming Together: Among the Stars
• Get acceptance letters out and contracts written up
• Finish writing Classic (I may need to step up my writing game just a little bit with this one; current time on project sees me finishing the 2nd week of October at 62,000 words, if I write at the rate I've been going)
• Edit Howling Bitch for send out to my beta readers (there are some plot problems with it, and I need to get those fixed, otherwise my beta readers are just going to tell me what I already know)
• attend writer's retreat in Richmond

October

• Get contracts back for Coming Together: Among the Stars
• Edit those stories
• Edit A Wanted Woman
• write forward for Coming Together: Among the Stars

November 

• NaNoWriMo - The Sins of Angels, Demoniac Codex, book 3

December

• Final pass at A Marked Man for publication
• Get Howling Bitch back from beta readers and clean that up

January

• Finish writing Sins of Angels
• Send Classic around to beta readers

I think that's as far out as I can project right now...

nebulous items on my plate

• write steampunk novel, Wormwood Trade
• write All that Jazz (Rainbow Connections side novel)
• write Death Magic (Book Four, Demoniac Codex)
• write Punked Up (Rainbow Connections side novel)
• write Me, Flailing (BDSM novel)
• write contemporary romance, Hailey's Comet

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...

Goals for the Upcoming Year and Some Reviews

I really don't like New Year's resolutions...

There's no particular reason to wait for a certain date to get something done, and I'm never really sure the intense pressure a lot of people feel about New Years does them any good at all...

Also, plans are what you make while life happens;

But, going forward:

First off, I plan to review every single book that I read. (I may or may not review books that I've previously read and am currently re-reading, since I do that a lot, too...)

Second, I have two novels to write this year; Blues, the sequel to Roll, and Howling Bitch, the sequel to Blood Sight. Since I did Blues as my NaNoWriMo project and I'm 54,000 words into the novel thus far, I plan to have it completed by the end of February. I'm guessing I have a little less than 10,000 words to go on the project, so it shouldn't take me that long.

Howling Bitch is going to be about the same length, so if I start writing it in March, I'd like to aim to have it done by the end of August. Mostly because I don't intend to try another NaNoWriMo-type-push... guestimating about ~700 words a day, four days a week, I should finish in six months... seems reasonable, right?

Third; Liz and I are finally finished writing and editing our collection of short stories, which underwent a project title change recently, and is no longer "Promptly" but now "Whetting the Appetite" which might be better if I could spell Appetite correctly the first time. Which I cannot. So, we're going to wait a week or so, then both do another complete read through it, make sure we didn't miss any typos and then submit it by mid-January... wish us luck.

Fourth; I also have several other side projects I want to work on. My friend Jonah's working on a collection called Local Magic and I'm hoping to get this ghost project together by January 15th for him. I also have several shorts I want to write and submit for some other collections. I have a ton of story ideas that got abandoned for other projects. Alive and Kicking, Leaving her Marke, one of these days I'm going to write the Wormwood Trade, a steampunk romance that I've had brewing for a while. (Amazing how I seem to only have one front burner, but 500 "back burners".)

I wrote a couple of reviews today, kicking off that particular goal....

Four Stars All I want for Christmas - V.L. Locey

 Let's start off with the fact that I love Locey; she's funny and sweet and her stories are intensely emotional. if I am ever disappointed in a Locey book, it'll be because I went off my medication.

Alex and Cooper are another mis-match to start, attracted to each other but each with preconceived notions that turn out all wrong. One surly painter, one optimistic do-gooder and a pair of quirky cats turn their worlds upside down.

Again, bravo!

Five Stars The Wicked - Thea Harrison

Great add on piece

I love the Elder Races, and this one was pretty fun! Great supplement to the main stories... hot grouchy alpha male, puzzled, exasperated intelligent female. Good mix.

Five Stars Dragos Takes a Holiday - Thea Harrison

More Dragos, More Pia,  and a little bit of Peanut on the side...

Cute story and every bit as fun as the rest of the series; I love the Elder Races...

Five Stars Kinked - Thea Harrison

Best one yet! I've been reading the Elder Races since the beginning, but I really liked this one a lot. Clears up some old mysteries left over from Dragon Bound and brings new life to side characters that have gotten very little attention up til this point. Also, continues to answer questions about the world, tying all the stories together. Marvelous!

Four Stars - No Good Duke Goes Unpunished - Sarah MacLean

Emotional Rollercoaster of a novel

I admit the premise is a bit weak; I spent a LOT of the book going "oh, COME ON... really?" but the love story is good, the sex is hot, and the characters are fairly typical of MacLean, which is to say tough women and tougher men.

(Note: I have not read the other books in this "series" so maybe I would have liked it more if I knew the side characters better...)

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.

Roll with it

Well, I'm finished Part Three of London Steam, my vampire / artificial heart / daughter of a demon menage story...

Pretty awesome. And it's already been contracted by Torquere Press, which is More Awesome.

I have a cowboy story, Pistols & Guns, out right now. Ripped is still out - I begin to think that project folded and vanished into nothingness. The story's been out for over a year now and I haven't heard a word... My middle-aged lesbian story is out... and that's it at the moment.

I may or may not write a Tristan & Isolde based BDSM story; I have one that's about halfway done, but I'm not really happy with it. I think I'd have to scrap what I've written and start over. The due date for that one is May 1st, so I still have time... ish.

And I may submit stories for both Sex Objects (due July 1st) and Delilah's Highlanders & Knights call... (due June 1st)...

I've also finished concept edits for my fantasy-romance novel, cut the word count down dramatically, and have it ready for pitching. More on that later.

I need to finish writing my vampire urban supernatural story - I pretty much ended the damn thing right after the climax (story climax, not sex climax!) without having any of the falling action, sum-up stuff that usually makes up the end of a romance novel.

And then there's what I want to be doing now... which is the coming of age, m/m story, Roll, that's somewhat loosely based on a short story that I never finished. The original short was about two lovers, one of the men firmly in the closet, especially with his family, who took his boyfriend out to the family farm on a day when no one else was supposed to be there (because it was the day before his brother's wedding, and really, everyone had something better to be doing...) and ends up getting caught... that scene is still going to be in the novel, but when I sat down to map out the characters, they both had more to tell me. And in the end, I decided to let them. Which means I have a novel length project in front of me....

Beau with his uptight, highly religious family, and Vin with his over-protective grandparents and the search for his birth-father...

So, I'm working on that. My outline gives me the thought that this'll be about a 50,000 - 75,000 word novel... which means if I write about 2,500 - 3,000 words a week, I should be ready for edits in September/October.

And I've still got my short-short project; we just passed 25,000 words yesterday... I think it's going well, and that should be complete by June. (Oh, and I could use some more prompts... 5 words, noun, verb, adjective, and two random...)

Busy writer is busy. I've already written 3,200 words on Roll this week, in addition to writing 1,800 words yesterday on my short-short (which I may steal, write another 2,000 words on, and turn in as my short for Sex Objects... we'll see....)

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

Cutting to the Chase

"Cut to the chase" is a saying that means to get to the point without wasting time.
The phrase originated from early silent films. It was a favorite of and thought to have been coined by Hal Roach Sr (January 14, 1892 – November 2, 1992). Films, particularly comedies, often climaxed in chase scenes to add to film time. Some inexperienced screenwriter or director, unsure how to get to the climax or the lack of script to meet time requirements, would just make an abrupt transition, known as a cut.
--Wikipedia

So, sometimes I can be monumentally stupid.

Prone to exaggeration.

Eager to please.

And sometimes I can be all three of these things at once and get myself into quite a lot of trouble.

Which is exactly what I did yesterday.

I got an email from someone that's working with me on my novel. I'm supposed to be finished concept and cutting edits by April. (The whole novel, when finished, was over 170,000 words. Apparently I used to have a really huge problem with bloat. Not something that's happening as much anymore with my deep sea diving into the realm of shorter works...) R. tells me that I need to cut well over 50,000 words and probably 75,000 would be great!

Yesterday, I got an email in my box, "Hey girl, how are those edits going?"

Me, blithely, having taken notes on ALL chapters and actually followed up on those notes with full concept edits, but probably not cutting edits on 6 chapters... and not really thinking much about it... exaggerate a little.

"I've got it about 1/3 done or so. Ten chapters, or thereabouts. I pretty much trashed the entire Chapter Four. Oh, and Chapter 30. That one's gone, too."

Oh, I am such a freaking liar.

Well, not about Chapter Four. I did take that entire bit of nonsense out. The chapter originally had some purpose, to showcase the Male Protagonist's fighting skills and to keep things in line with the original plot... (my main plot has changed a few times...) But it wasn't fitting in as well any more and it introduced a very memorable, likable character that NEVER CAME BACK AT ALL. I love Dr. Roux more than I can express, but he was really unnecessary. And because he was so colorful, I had several beta readers who were angry and disappointed that he never showed up again. So I took out the whole thing. The party, the duel, the injury, the recovery. All of it. Whack, whack, whack.

"Kill your darlings." -- Stephen King. (A man, I might add, who could use a bit of darling killing himself...)

"Oh, great! I always worry that writers are falling behind. Go ahead and send it on to me, so I can look at it?"

Oh, Fuck Me.

Me, "Sure thing. Give me a bit of time to get it all reformatted and stuff. I'm working in Scrivener... Tomorrow or Friday?"

Soooo... I spent five hours last night busting my ass and getting the edits done that I said I'd done. On the plus side, I really have gone through and taken some comprehensive notes. And these are first draft edits to tighten up the plot, cut out the excess wording, and trying to make sure stuff is internally consistent throughout. I fully expect that I'll have to go through again and make more word-cuts. In fact I'm pretty sure of at least three chapters in the next 1/3 that can go, entirely.

Because I can skip all the exposition and cut straight to the chase.

Literally.

The world didn't end

That's a text I got from a friend of mine on December 22nd.

"The world didn't end. Now I have to do my Christmas Shopping. Crap."

Yeah, that happens. If you wait until something happens, or doesn't happen... sometimes you end up doing shopping at the very last minute, and panicking.

Even if, sometimes, you don't do what you meant to do. I set a bunch of very specific goals last year and accomplished almost none of them.

So, flexibility is good, too.

Now, admittedly, I have it pretty good. I don't have a public sector job. (I used to say "real job" but fuck you, being a mother, housekeeper, and writer is a real goddamn job and I bet I work harder than a lot of people out there who punch a clock....) While this has its drawbacks (no vacation, no sick days, no clear-set career goals, and strangely enough, sometimes not having a boss is a lack I keenly feel...) it also has its benefits. I won't say I have a ton of free time, because let's face it, I really don't. And I don't work a "shift" and then get to be off-shift. I am always on-call as mom. I am always on-call as housekeeper. And I'd have to be in a coma to stop worrying about stories and ideas.

But I can arrange my time as I see fit.

So my goals are slightly different this year. While I still have a ton of projects that I want to do, and stories that want to be told, I'm going to try something else.

I want to arrange my time a little better.

I'm not, perhaps at this time, ready to dedicate myself to being a full-time, 9-12 hours a day, writer. I'm not ready to say I will write 3,000 words a day. (I know people who do that and it always makes me feel a little bit like a slacker... ) What I am ready to do, however, is start treating my writing as a job.

I want my butt in the chair from 8am until 1pm. Daily.

I have several projects I want to work on, and I'm not going to get those done if I'm playing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I'd like to be even more structured than that; I have an ultra-short story collection that we want to have done and ready to present to a publisher by end of Summer, so I'm going to set one day aside to work on those stories. (Here's where you, dear reader, come in... I'll need flash-fiction prompts to get me started. At any time, feel free to leave a five word prompt; at least one noun, one verb, one adjective, and 2 words of your choice. If I select your prompt, you WILL get credit in any finished product... )

I want to set one day aside to work on other short-story projects. I keep saying I should work on longer projects, and I will, but I also have a really hard time passing Submission Calls by. I love Submission calls. So, one day a week, I'll work on whatever Sub-Call I happen to find interesting.

Two days a week will be set aside for work on my longer novels and projects.

And one day will be set aside to edit my novel.

Also, I'd like to do more with my blog. I know I'm a sporatic blogger, I thought I'd try to get a little more active here... have some contests, some guest bloggers, and other things... we'll see. I can't promise the moon. And really, do you want to have to dust that thing if I gave it to you?

Anyway, much love, luck, and lust in 2013...

Looking at my Progress

(Just as a note, there's still a bit more time to qualify for the absolute TON of smutty prizes for the Advent Calendar. Winner announced tomorrow.)

Last year, I thought it couldn't get any better... that 2011 was the best year of my life.

It's really nice to be proven wrong sometimes.

Now, admittedly, I went about everything upside down and backwards, barely accomplished a thing that I'd set out to do for myself in 2012... and yet, still... fan-freaking-tastic!

I wrote Blister Effect and saw it published. From my to-do list from the beginning of the year, that's all I said I was going to do that got done.

However, I also:

• wrote and published 8 short stories (two of which are in the 10,000 word range...)
• submitted 5 more stories that were either rejected or I haven't heard back yet... 
• Got asked to write something specific for a few different editors
• MOVED INTO A HOUSE
• edited about 8 chapters in my novel
• planned out and wrote the outline for a romance novel
• planned out and wrote an outline for a young adult novel
• saw my work featured in both Publisher's Weekly and Hustler Magazine
• wrote at least 85,000 words that I can conveniently count (somewhere along the way, I stopped tracking my word counts quite as religiously)
• wrote 53 blog entries
• wrote guest blog entries for a few well-known erotica writers
• worked out a rough idea for a project with fellow-writer and best friend, Elizabeth Brooks
• wrote a chapter in a collaborative novel project (more on that tomorrow, since it's finally "revealed" tonight)

So, while I accomplished almost nothing that I'd intended, I did a lot of good work on other stuff, and I am quite pleased.

2012 has been a good year.

Stupid Stupid Writer Brain

I have been saying, recently, that my short stories have been successful, and now it's time to focus on writing (and of course, publishing) longer pieces.

I have a full-length (maybe a bit long, actually... the first draft was close to 150,000 words!!) novel that is currently in the process of going through the painful time of "second draft"... or "concept edits" if you prefer that phrase. The... "It's a romance novel, and you simply cannot have your hero accidentally kill a twelve year old girl in a romance novel, are you crazy?" stage of things.

I have at least two more London Steam novelettes to finish... I'm about halfway through Synchronous Rotations which is a steampunk/vampire/menage (m/m/f) story. And then I have Wind Me Counterclockwise which is another steampunk menage story, this one m/f/clockwork robot... each of these stories will probably run in the 10,000 - 15,000 word range.

And then I have a more traditional romance, steampunk, novel, The Wormwood Trade, that I've concepted, outlined, and done some character write-ups for, as well as written an intro and the first 2 chapters. I am guestimating that Wormwood Trade will run between 80,000 and 100,000 words when complete.

So, like I said, I have a lot of work ahead of me. If I can do all of these things in 2013, that'd be great... 

Which does mean, really, that I'll either have to cut waaaaay back on my short story writing, or I'll have to actually get my ass in gear and write every damn weekday. (because, confessions of a writer here... I really, really don't... Most weeks, I write maybe 1 to 3 days...)

So, of course I end up thinking about... other projects.

Because I am a stupid, stupid writer.

The first project idea that I'm toying with is a collaborative project... it sort of mulled around in a couple of different ways. First thing was, I was listening to the radio and a Pittbull song came on. Now, more than a year ago, my best friend and fellow erotica writer, Elizabeth L. Brooks, wrote a flash fic piece with Pittbull as one of the words selected that she had to work into the short...

Now, she wrote that piece back in August, 2011... so I read it over 16 months ago... and it's stuck with me. I remembered it when I had a beer in October of that year that actually had accents of caramel... and I remembered it again when I heard a Pittbull song on the radio. It's a really, really good piece. So, I texted her about it while the song was on.

We got to talking about the piece, via texts... and she mentioned that she was editing some ultra-shorts for a collection and that she was... well, not too terribly fond of them.

"You could just do your own," I said. (I text in complete sentences, most of the time. I really hate chat-speak and if 140 characters isn't enough, I can send a second text.)

"I suppose I could."

Elizabeth texts me back in full sentences. It's one of the many, many reasons I love her.

"In further fact, we could probably do one together."

"Let me talk to my publisher about that..."

And thus was born the idea. Writing one flash fic piece per week, 500 - 1,000 words long. (I will probably need some audience participation on this one, for 3-4 word prompts to write to... all suggestions used will get their names in the front of the book/e-book if it gets published. I think the publisher Elizabeth is thinking of going with has a minimum e-book sales requirement for a book to go into print... )

So, that's the first thing.

And then... well, it started as a one thing and then ended up as a "will you shut up, brain?" thing.

I got an email yesterday from an editor who'd talked with one of my other editors.. "I've been told you write hot... any way I could sway you to be interested in doing a submission for cupid's chokehold?!" We email back and forth last night, getting details and stuff for another one of Hot Ink's holiday special anthologies.

There's a pretty tight deadline for this submission, obviously, to get it out before the 14th of February. And I'm exceedingly flattered to be asked to participate. This will be the third collection/publication where I've been specifically requested to submit, and let me tell you, that does all sorts of wonderful things for my ego. So, I went to bed last night, thinking about it.

And I came up with a story idea. Except that it doesn't really work for that collection.

It does, however, work for this collection.

I had looked over this call and dismissed it. I don't usually go the BDSM route. Which is not to say I don't mind a little tie-down or some playful spankings. I've tried it out in an informal sort of way. Certainly never to the extent of costumes or industrial grade chains. And I'm not really familiar with a lot of the "tropes" of the Master/slave relationship. Given how much crapola 50 Shades of Fanfic has gotten about badly portraying the BDSM lifestyle with its "red room of pain"... I've not been especially eager to add my name to the list of the don't know what the fuck she's talking about...

Except now I have an idea. And it's a brilliant idea. And I LOVE the idea.

So, I took some notes. It's not due until my birthday (May 1st) so I have time.

And I was looking through my slush pile today. I have several stories that have either not found a home, or have not been completed - I have a really interesting piece that's only about 1/3 done that I started for another collection and then had an excess of real life and didn't finish it. I wrote to the editor for a week's extension on the deadline and was told she had plenty of submissions and she was running tight on time anyway.

I really think I can make Two Tents work for the Valentine's collection. So... that's what I'll be doing.

And it looks like I'll be writing "Make your Mark" as well, for the May 1st, Princess Bound collection as well. And there's the possibility that I might write up a story for Delilah's Cowboy Heat collection. And Elizabeth and I are more than likely going to go ahead and work on this collaborative short-short collection...

Oh, and plus, I decided that I was going to teach myself to crochet this year, since I really do not know how to do any craftsty sort of things, and I sometimes feel bad about that. Also, if I can learn to make those tiny cute stuffie crocheted dolls, that would really make a lot of gifts for my geeky friends.

So... busy writer is fucking busy this year.

PS - there's still time to enter the last drawing for the Smutty Advent Calendar... so go do that, people, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation??

Know ThySelf

One of my writer friends asked a question the other day.

"How do you decide what project to work on next?"

It's been, for a while, pretty easy for me. I work on whatever project is due out the door first. I also know what I'm capable of doing, as far as writing goes, and that's where I think is the important work.

Yes, I CAN churn out a 50,000 word crappy novel in a month. But what I don't seem capable of doing is bothering to rewrite the thing. It's so bad I may as well just start over...

What I can do, generally, is write about 500 - 2,500 words in a week, that are GOOD words. Sometimes I feel I should do more, sometimes I feel I should do better, sometimes I feel like I should sit my butt down in the chair and work-work-work.

But I don't.

And so, when I'm planning... I plan for what I know I can and WILL do.

500 - 2,500 words per week.

So, if a call for submissions is due on, let's say February 1st. And they want stories between 2,500 words and 5,000 words... well, typically my stories are about 3,300 words, unless they're longer stories, in which case they run between 8,000 - 11,000... And I assume that while I'll have some good weeks, I'll also have some bad weeks. So, for a short-short, I try to start about four weeks before the story is due. That gives me three weeks to write it, a week to review and fix things (and extra oh shit time). And a longer story - for some reason I find it easier to be productive on longer pieces... I have more 2,500 weeks rather than 500 weeks. I try to start around five to six weeks ahead of time.

But this year, I really want to try to work on some longer pieces. I have a couple of novellas burning around in my brain, and one full-length novel.

So what do I start with?

Is it the characters that yell loudest? Not really. I have some really loud characters that have already had their stories told and they refuse to move the fuck out. (I'm looking at you, Master Hooke.) And sometimes the characters that talk to me least - at first - turn out to be the most interesting...

I put together soundtracks to get me into the mood for writing... and I write up my outlines (sometimes that happens on paper, sometimes that happens almost entirely in my head) and then I work on whatever piece I have the best foothold in. I'm not a pantser. I struggle with the whole NaNoWriMo process because if I just *write* my characters wander off thataway and I have no idea where they're going or what they're going to do when they get there. Which, I know, works really well for some people. I'm more of a "if we're going to my dad's, I know it'll take about four hours to get there, and I'm likely to be hungry, and shouldn't we stop for gas somewhere along the way?"

So, I write whatever I think I can make the most progress in before I'm back at that blank paper going "Oh, fuck me sideways, what now?"


PS - Don't forget to stop by the Smutty Advent Calender. Only a few days left before it's over!

Guest Who's going to Dinner?

I have  a guest post - my first! wooo! - over at Oh Get a Grip, where several of my favorite writers blog weekly on a wide variety of topics, including the ever-marvelous Charlotte Stein and my personal favorite editor, Kristina Wright.

So, drop by, see what I have to say about the Noise in the Universe... and if you're come here from there, welcome!

Today I'm totally off to do good works; supporting the Can't Stop the Serenity screening, proceeds go to Equality Now and Samaritan House (global and local charities). Of course the fact that I'm a raging Whedon nerd has nothing to do with it... So if you're out and about in Hampton Roads today, stop by Colley Ave in Norfolk for a good show.

And then later, we're taking Mikey Mason out for some beers at our favorite local restaurant, the Biergarden, with its impressive menu of 300-350 beers and the best German food in Virginia.

Hippo Gnu Deer

I felt a bit alone this New Years, which is funny, since I think this year I was surrounded by more people on that occasion than usual. (Admittedly, I spent at least an hour and a half of it attempting - and failing - to keep an elderly Jewish woman from completely losing her shit, but hey...)

I felt alone because I was the only one mourning the passing of 2011.

2011 was the best year of my life, bar none.

I remember, way back in 5th grade, when the most interesting thing about me was that my name was longer than I was, I was introduced to a strange concept; People write books. Actual, real people. Someone I could talk to had written books. And other people read them. Hey, I was a kid. I suppose if you'd asked me before that, I would have acknowledged that people wrote books, but I hadn't really glommed onto the concept... that year, my teacher had us write short stories. Each student wrote a short story, mine was called Alona and the Blue Ribbon. After we wrote - and then revised - the story, we made bound copies by writing the words carefully on paper, sewing the pages together, and pasting them inside cloth-bound cardboard covers.

I still have mine. (It was bad. Terrible in fact. Fire drakes and fantasy, weirdly not-nice fairy godmothers... those fairies, always creep me out just a little bit... adventures and learning to deal with magic.)

From that day forward, I've wanted to be a writer.

And to some degree, more or less, I've been one. Or, at least, in the strictest sense. I was a writer in that I wrote. Along the way, I had one short story picked up by a Young Authors magazine (I was supposed to get 2 contributor copies, the magazine went out of business shortly after my acceptance, and if they ever printed my story, I never got a copy, and never saw it in print.) and one play picked up by an underground lesbian indie magazine. (I didn't submit that one, my professor did in college, and I suppose I should be grateful that she submitted it under my name instead of her own, since there's no way in hell I would have ever known about it otherwise. I don't count that, really, because that's not a piece of work I would have wanted to publish on my own.)

I don't actually have the "stack of rejection letters" that a lot of writers talk about having. Oh, I've received a few of them. About 10 years ago, I sent out a string of inquiry letters to agents, trying to sell my co-authored book, Circle in the Sand. I got back 3 "no thank yous" and never heard on the rest of them. Really, if I send out a SASE, is it that much trouble to say no thank you? I never kept any of them; or at least, I don't think I did. If I have any, I have no idea where they are, and that's about the same thing, right?

2011, things changed.

I finally found my groove for writing; and honestly, if I'd been paying attention, I'd have found it a lot earlier. I took Creative Writing in college twice which meant I wrote four short stories for critiques over the course of two semesters. I wrote two horror stories, one sci-fi and a modern-day romance about a woman who runs into her ex-husband while at a bar in the Bahamas. The one story that got any approval AT ALL from my classmates (now, don't mind me, but I will still say that 95% of my classmates were a bunch of snotty, stream of consciousness, look how stylistically I'm writing mom! assholes who were more interested in how obscure they could be rather than in learning how to tell a good STORY) was the one romance I wrote.

For decades now, I've been writing romance stories and trying to market them under a different genre. I've written horror romance, fantasy romance, and sci-fi romance. And when I was done writing, I'd go back and edit out all the sex, most of the romance, and end up with a bare-bones plot that just wasn't that interesting. What I'm most interested in is romance. My favorite sci-fi stories are the Liaden Universe novels, written by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. (Start here and move forward.) I like Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer stuff best of all her work; if you look at them, they're very, very romantic. I read and re-read, obsessively, Clan of the Cave Bear, which was one of the first novels I was introduced to that had graphically described sex. I'm a huge Jane Austen fan (I even have a Jane Austen action figure that is pinned to the wall near my monitor).

So... eight short stories written and submitted in 2011. Three accepted.

34,356 words written that have been submitted (slightly more if the fact that I had to submit On the Fly twice!)

One novel written. 50,059 words.

And one semi-completed short story that will be done within the next 2 weeks, for a total of 91,415 words written this year. (That's not including the 20,000 words I've edited OUT of Marked Man... or blog posts. Or flash fiction, of which I have written a TON....)

2011 has been the best year of my life. Bar none.

Except that I want to raise the bar.

Yes, yes, eventually I'm getting to the point, hold onto your butts.

2012 (it's the end of the world as we know it....)

I would like to write over 150,000 words.
I would like to submit one short story per month (with the average word count of 4,000 words submitted, so if I submit a longer story, say 10,000 words, that counts as 2 stories...)
I would like to finish editing Marked Man and get it out the door.
I would like to plot out and begin re-writes for Circle in the Sand
I would like to finish Blood Sight and begin edits for that
I would like to start writing Hunter Moon (perhaps as my NaNoWriMo project)
I would like to start writing The Wormwood Trade

So... that's my broad plan for 2012...

More detailed plans:

Finish writing Blister Effect (a 10-15k short story) by Jan 15th, get to betas and get submitted by Jan 31st
Plot out and write Roll, a 3-5k short story and submit by Feb 29th
Plot out and write Alive and Kicking, a 3-5k short story and submit by March 15th
Plot out and write a tentacle sex story, 20 - 25k, due for submission March 25th 
Plot out and write Picking up the Pieces, a 15 - 20k short story, due for submission March 31st
Plot out and start writing Nocturnal Equations, a 10k short story, due April 30th

(I'm not committing myself to both of the March longer stories; I'm mulling them over and trying to decide which one I want to do more...)

Put a Bow on It

Merry Midwinter Spending Holiday.

(That fits everyone's beliefs and offends as many people as possible.)

I'd say I'm sorry I've been MIA, but I'm not. I spent 10 days in Orlando, Florida, which was excellent, and I'm not sorry about that. Here, have a picture!

The weather was almost ideal the whole time - it was a little chilly and rained a bit one day, but that was it. I had a great time. The husband had a great time. The child had a great time, with only a few tears. She reached MFQ a few times.

As I had to explain this while down in Florida, here's the quick and dirty: MFQ = Maximum Fun Quotient. The time after MFQ is reached, no matter how fun an activity, no matter how much you've been looking forward to it, etc, you just cannot have any more fun. You are tired, or overloaded, or both. Toddlers reach MFQ fairly quickly.

As one of the bout of tears had to do with the fact that we cannot take live baby ducks home, I sort of wrote that off as MFQ.

In the real, non-Disney world: One of my stories returned home to me, unpublished. This is not because it wasn't good; in fact I am assured by the editor that it was, actually, very good and would have been accepted for publication except that the editor is having a hard time of things and just doesn't feel she can get the book out any time soon, so has put the project on permanent hiatus. I'm mildly sad about this, since I really adore this editor, and I would have loved to have a project with her name on it. On the other hand, I'm delighted that she liked my story, even if I can't, in the interest of politeness, tell you who she is. I did some looking around and turned the story around to someone else; hopefully I'll find a home for it. If not, I might offer it up as a free-read or a 99cent Amazon deal. We'll see. Amazon's stuff confuses me.

I'm deep into the "I hate Christmas" part of the year. My hand to god, one year, I'm just gonna snap and there will be Rudolf guts everywhere. My family drives me crazy in the most well-meaning sort of way. I never feel like I've done enough, or can buy enough, and those feelings in and of themselves make me crazy because that's NOT what it's supposed to be. And hell's bells, I'm not even Christian, so why am I doing this anyway? Except that I would feel MORE bad if I didn't, and honestly, I have enough guilt to lug around without deliberately adding to the stack.

My writing schedule is finally Not Whack, which is good.

I have 2 more chapters in Blood Sight to write, and then it'll be time to dig into the re-writes and edits. I have cut 20,000 words out of Marked Man so far, with another 30-45k to go. I am almost done writing Blister Effect (6k out of 9-10k). I have detailed out the plot for Wind Counterclockwise, a B&S Menage piece, expected to run 15 - 20K. I have re-read and started plotting for the rewrite of Circle in the Sand, a co-written Menage novel with my dear friend Elizabeth L. Brooks. I have plotted out the story for a 10 - 15k m/m novelette called Roll. I have plotted out the story for a f/f short 3,500 - 5k words story tentatively called Alive and Kicking. I also have tentatively decided to write a 10-20k novelette for an End of Days antho.

Out in the wild, I have PBEM, Snake Dance, Which Way the Wind Blows, and Ripped, still waiting to hear; and On the Fly has been submitted elsewhere. Lustfully Ever After has achieved cover-art.

I'll see you all next year!

Setting Myself Up

I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

To be honest with you, I didn't expect it to be the 29th of November and for me to have anywhere close to 50,000 words.

I rather expected that, much like I've done several times before, I'd start up the NaNoWriMo project with the best of intentions and sputter out somewhere around week 2. I've only once ever completed the project (and then I lost it all in a titanic hard drive failure), even though I've attempted it at least five times previous.

I don't know what happened this year. I have 2 more writing days in the month and I'm currently at 47,400. (I'm not done for today, mind you, just taking a break.)

However, I do have a project I want to do that's due to the editor by December 15th - a 3-6k short erotica with a fantasy theme. Which would probably be doable if (BIG if!) I wasn't going to Florida for a week, starting on Friday. However, I have the outline for Dragon Maiden written up and I'm going to take my laptop with me to Florida. Give my parents some grandchild time and I'll stay one or two mornings in the resort and get some work done. Ha. Ha ha ha. I foresee my writing like a fiend on the 11th and 12th when I get home and then badgering my beta to do a forced review. (Hi, Liz and Greg. You are warned!)

And this one? I'd love to do this project. I even have an idea. But to get it done in less than a month. Well, I might be able to. If I didn't have any other social engagements.

And I promised myself I'd finish Blood Sight, which is my NaNoWriMo project. I'm about 50K words in which will give me a technical "win" for the project, but I'm not actually done. I'm expecting the rough draft needs another 15,000 words to be actually finished.

And I have two old novel projects that I've told myself I will finish and get out the freaking door, A Marked Man is finished. I need to edit a few things in Chapters 9 - 11 and cut out about 50,000 words. (I even know where about 35,000 are going to come from!). Circle in the Sand - a VERY old project - could use some edits, have the sex scenes put back in, and then polished.

And I have the sequels/companion stories for Shadow of Kenfig to work on. I keep changing the titles, but at present they are Blister Effect (10k words estimated, 6k of which are done), Lunar Equations (10k estimated, outline drawn up), Umbral Theories (10k estimated, a one sentence hook written) and Wind Me Counterclockwise (20,000 words, outline drawn up). After Blister Effect, I think I may work on Wind Me Counterclockwise, since that premise has the most excitement for me, at the moment.

I also have a lesbian story in mind, Stealing Third, 3-5k words.

And a boylove story, Roll in the Hay, which will probably be about 10k.

And then there's the novel ideas: Blood Sight is the first of four stories that I have planned for that particular series; Blood Sight, Hunter Moon, Bad Intentions, and Grave Magic. (ish 80k words each!)

Also, I have a steampunk romance idea, The Wormwood Trade.

And that's not even including the fact that I haven't been looking for any more submission calls...

Busy writer is busy.

Shifting Steam

This morning I got the news that Shifting Steam - an anthology which will contain my longer short story, Shadow of Kenfig - will be released October 26th.

Here's the cover art.

Lovely, yes?

I'm looking forward to seeing what else is in the collection.

Genre: LGBT romance/erotica

Synopsis: The young lord, Seth Maitland, is infected by the gwren, turning him into a ravening monster during the full moon, or when overpowered by anger. Can he convince Dr. Poindexter Fizthugh to help him and possibly find a cure for his condition?

NaPlUrNoMo

Ok, I think everyone in the writing world knows about NaNoWriMo. I love saying that. Hate typing it, but I love saying it. NaNoWriMo. Just sort of falls off the tongue after being rolled around in your mouth like an everlasting gobstopper. With a trail of multicolored saliva following it. Ok, unattractive mental image. Sorry.

If you don't, go look it up.

I have done NaNoWriMo successfully (well, finished a project, wrote the 50,000 words, etc) once; that Draft Zero crock of steaming crap was so bad I didn't even show it to anyone. And then my hard drive crashed in January and I lost it anyway. Talking about the Bad Novel later with a friend, I got an insight into my hero - I could never quite figure out why he liked the heroine, although he insisted that he did. With my friend's comments, I was able to get a handle on him, figure her - the character, not my friend - out, and I rewrote the whole thing. Since I didn't have the draft to work from, this was a complete revision. And that was a much better story. Took me about five months to write. Marked Man, as I ended up titling it, is now in secondary revisions that I hope to complete by the end of the year.

I've tried a few times since then to do NaNoWriMo and sometimes I go for a week or so, and sometimes I don't even get started!

Well, I'm going to try AGAIN this year. I have several novel-ish projects percolating on back burners. (How is it that my kitchen has 2 back burners and 2 FRONT burners and my brain has 1 front burner and 5,000,000 back burners?) I have a series of urban supernatural romances; Blood Sight, Moon Shadow, Bad Intentions, and Death Magic. I have a steampunk romance, The Wormwood Trade. I have a zombie novel; Zom and the art of Undead Maintenance. I'll pick one and run with it.

Which brings me to the title of this blog entry.

NaPlUrNoMo

NAtional PLan yoUR NOvel MOnth.

I know, NaNoWriMo isn't supposed to be about planning. It's supposed to be about bashing your head in and hoping something useful leaks out.

Well, you know, NaNo is a like an RPG. And the first rule of an RPG is "If you don't like the rules, change 'em."

So, for the rest of October, in between looking for houses, promoting Steamlust, celebrating the fact that I've managed to not kill my child by neglect or accident for 8 whole years, and other crazy shit on my schedule, I'm going to outline and think about what I'm going to write for NaNo.

And I know this is probably a stupid question, but I would LIKE some opinions anyway; what would YOU like to see?