Category: The Writing

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Glimmers In the Gloaming

[if you were wondering from my last post – Darby beat out Helayna. I finished Blizzard Bound!]

One of the most important times for me to “hear” ideas coming from Story is when I’m not fully awake or asleep. It can happen at night, but lately, I’m picking up the frequencies in the morning.

One of the biggest problems with picking up on those frequencies in the past was the Evil Day Job. I had to be up, rolling out of bed, hitting the laptop at a set time. No lying in bed, cozy under the blankets, while my mind drifted in and out of focus. Sometimes on the weekend I could do it, but usually I was too tired. So I slept late. Then it was time to go – not lay in bed. Same at night. I was always up late to get some words in, so by the time I hit the sack, I was out like a light. (Or I would get on TikTok, which is a whole other time sink.)

Goddess help me if I got a work call at 2 AM because then everything was in the toilet for the entire week.

Now that I’m retired from the EDJ, I don’t have to get up immediately. I do have an alarm set for 8 AM, just so I don’t sleep away the entire morning, but I can stay in bed and drift for a while if I’m not already awake. I can let the subconscious mind work its magic.

AS LONG AS I REMEMBER…

That’s the catch now. I’m getting the twilight ideas, but I don’t always retain them. Especially if I’m showering in the morning, taking care of Honey Bun, making coffee, etc. Then there’s all the little morning routine things I do (now that I have time to do them every morning instead of immediately clocking in for the EDJ). Sometimes those little nuggets are gone like a whiff of smoke.

I can usually find them again, but I have to mine for what I already had. It takes time. And what if I had nuggets for a story I’m not actively working on currently? This is especially becoming important as I try to work on multiple stories at the same time. One story might be “hot” in word count, but I get the nugget for the other story. I don’t want to lose it – but I don’t want to lose momentum either.

The new thing I’m trying–starting this morning!–is a kind of morning pages like Julia Cameron recommends. Except modified and simplified. Stream of consciousness type writing usually leads me to still being too “tight.” I want complete sentences and punctuation. I want to continue the paragraph and flesh it out. All too soon, it’s a rough draft, not a quick note, and I’m losing the other quick notes I had.

So this morning, I took the Blizzard Bound/Snow Song journal and made a page of bullet points every other line. I set a timer for a sprint. And I just went through and dropped as many things as I could think of – even if they were repeats of things I know I wrote down before. Just so I don’t lose them. In 10 mins or so, I had almost a full page. The bullets already there made me keep each idea short rather than slipping into draft mode.

Then I did the same thing for Queen Takes Darkness2 in the House Isador journal (which is almost full again).

Side note: I was kicking myself when I tried to pick up Helayna again after finishing Blizzard Bound. It’d been about 2 weeks since I’d written anything in her draft because Blizzard Bound started the roll down hill. When I get that momentum… nothing’s going to stop me. (Who needs to eat or sleep?) I’m certainly not going to switch to another project.

But I had ideas for Helayna that I hadn’t written down. I was working on her legacy. What her powers are–and would be. AND I LOST IT.

By the time I came back this week, the trail was cold. I had to re-read. Scrounge around in my shitty notes (I didn’t write it down). Re-read again. Get a pick-axe and a shovel and start digging to find what I’d foolishly forgotten to document.

Lesson learned.

If there are glimmers in the gloaming…

I need to make time and space to write them down immediately. So I don’t have to get blisters from all the mining later.

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Experimentation

I’ve been doing the writing gig for a few years now (cough, since 2003) but the only thing that stays the same is getting words on the page. Everything else is always changing. How I write a book. How I get an idea. How I finish. How I track.

Now that I don’t have the Evil Day Job sucking up 40+ hours a week, I have even MORE time to experiment!

Partly from necessity. I can’t just move from 40+ hours of corporate work and 20+ hours of creative/publishing work a week to 60+ hours of creative/publishing work. I wish I could! But my brain needs time to build the framework and characters and dialogue in the background, which is why I was able to write as much as I did while still working.

Now I need to convince my brain to do more of that background work in the foreground. While still being creative. While still finding ways to keep the well filled and primed.

One thing I’m trying is working on multiple projects at the same time. It does not come naturally to me. I keep wanting to hyper-focus on one thing and just grind day and night until it’s done. But what I’ve found over the past few months is that there is a natural set-point I have each day in a given project. Getting beyond that baseline is possible–but those words are harder and slower to get. I’m doing all the foreground and background work at the same time.

Now in the EDJ world, I never got to work on just one thing at a time. We always had multiple projects going on. Meetings every day on a variety of things, from team ceremonies to individual projects to corporate requirements, training, etc. Yet I still somehow always managed to get stuff done. Yeah, it was a struggle sometimes. I learned to block off time on my calendar for deep work a couple of times a week so I could focus on one thing at a time. But then I had to switch to the next project out of necessity.

Same here. I need to switch projects out of necessity–because I’ve written through as far as I can “see” at this time, and my subconscious needs time to percolate on what happens next. If I keep going, I’m going to struggle and slow down while I try to adjust the headlights on my car so I can see further in the fog.

But you know what they say about headlights in the fog. Sometimes you can see better with dim lights than brights.

I keep turning on those brights and then fuming when I’m crawling down the road because I still can’t see.

Since I finished Monstrous Rampage, I’ve been trying to switch back and forth between Queen Takes Darkness2 and Blizzard Bound. Some days are easier to switch than others. If I’m in the middle of a really complicated sex scene, for example, I’m scared to set it aside unless I’m just literally tapped out. I don’t want the scene to go too cold for fear I’ll lose the vibes.

I’ve also been tracking my daily schedule. What’s a natural time for me to start work? When do I tend to get the most interruptions from phone calls or visits from Dad? If I can mitigate the frustration of interruptions – by deliberately using that break – then that helps my mood all day. For example, Dad tends to visit me between 9-11AM most days on his morning walk, weather permitting. If I’m in the middle of a two-hour time blocked sprint, I get a little frustrated when I lose time. It can be hard to make myself start up again. But if I’m doing admin, it’s no big deal.

Or… here’s a thought. Instead of trying to get 4 sprints in a two-hour block before lunch, how about I only schedule myself two sprints before lunch and fill with admin. Because I know I’ll be interrupted. That way I’m not failing every day, which is not good for my mental health.

In the afternoon, I tend to not get as many calls until after 4. That’s the perfect time to shoot for 4 sprints in a two-hour block – in a second project.

After I break for dinner, Molly and I zoom almost every week night. If the second project is still rolling, then I can get 2 more sprints in. But if the last one before dinner was a struggle, I’m going back to the first project to see if I’ve had time to think about what comes next.

Then tomorrow I can choose which one to start the day with depending on how I ended the day.

We’ll see how that works as I finish these next two books. I think at some point one of them will “win out.” They’re both past the 50% mark. We’re on the rollercoaster, slowly clicking up higher and higher, making that climb toward the peak. At some point, one of them is going to tip over the cliff and shoot down toward the finish line. I don’t expect them both to tip at the same time – but that would be a crazy fun ride to try!

Of course the big question mark in November is finding time to get the holiday cards done. I’m hoping I can work on them during longer phone calls because they don’t take as much focus. I’m going to get the November and December birthday cards done ASAP, and then be ready to work on the holiday cards during football games or phone calls.

That’s the plan at least.

Any bets on which book is going to be finished first in November?

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Hel(l) Came (Again and Again)

Just following up on last week’s post about the four-year-old incomplete sex scene.

I worked on ONLY this book since that post instead of my two-wip pronged approach I’ve been trying to build. My theory was if I set Helayna aside again, it might be another four years. I can’t do that to you, me, or her. I need her story figured out. So every time I sat down to write, it was Queen Takes Darkness.

Even when I could only get 200 words. Even when it felt like stripping my own skin off as I crawled over shattered ice crystals. I kept going. Even if it felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all. I re-read the scenes, over and over, trying to get momentum built. I referred back several times to the Sept 2021 notes, cursing myself for not writing more down. I knew Svar had backstory that was super important. But what was it? Whatever vague idea I had was gone into the ether. I hadn’t left myself a single clue outside of a few hints in the books themselves.

I inputted (my #2 strength). Going over the dark alfar lore again. Refreshing the vibes I was going for. The Darkness playlist has been playing nonstop in my house. In the car. (Okay, I did play Taylor’s Life of a Showgirl too but it was primarily Helayna’s playlist!)

Part of what made this particular set of scenes so hard is that I was introducing two new characters and moving straight into sex. I needed their backstories. Their hangups and personalities. They had to be people, real, interesting, and most importantly, distinct from all the other Blood I’ve created.

Then when I got through them… I still had Svar’s backstory to figure out. I kept wanting to flinch away and do something easier. Lighter. But I had to see. So I knew where to go.

And then even after we made it through that Darkness, I still had one more Blood to go. Because when a vampire queen is working her way through her Blood, no one gets left out.

I think I broke my personal longest sex scene record. If I start with the first disrobing and go all the way through to the end of the last scene, it’s over 16k (edited – forgot to include the last scene!). Not all of that is actual sex but it’s all part of the journey. Learning these new characters. Finding new powers. Building relationships. That’s why, when people say they skip the sex scenes, it just does not compute for me.

If you skip one of these scenes, you’ll never know Svar’s backstory. Why he is the way he is. Who Dörr is as a person at his core. I may complain about how many sex scenes I end up writing in these books, but it’s always transformative and powerful. Which is why they’re hard to write–but hopefully that’s what makes them memorable.

This week, I’m planning to move back into my two projects a day schedule so I can get Blizzard Bound moving again. I don’t want it to go too cold. (Haha) Though now that I’m over the hump in Helayna’s story, it may all be downhill from here and she may win out. We’ll see.

Gee, that’d be terrible if I could finish BOTH of them before December….

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Come Hel(l) or High Water

It’s always hard to pick up a project after I set it aside for whatever reason. It’s doubly hard when I was in the middle of a sex scene…

Now add four years and try to pick up that project and make sense of it again.

I never intended to be gone from Helayna’s story for so long. The longer she lay idle, the harder it was to decide to pick up her story again. Their Vampire Queen’s world is so large and complex, I knew it was going to be tough to get all of the characters, magic, and story lines back into my head.

Finishing Karmen’s last story was easier–because there were crossovers into Shara’s story. So I could work on them both at the same time. Draw inspiration from one to help with the other.

Helayna’s story doesn’t have the same crossovers, at least where I left her. But I know I need her story figured out before I can get much further in Shara’s. I think I can finish Queen’s Purge without Helayna’s or Karmen’s stories laid out, but I can’t get much further after that.

Not without these queens ready to go.

I honestly hadn’t realized it’d been four years since I started Queen Takes Darkness2 until I couldn’t remember something and went looking for my notes. I have a current House Isador journal/bible with all the characters listed from all the houses. That’s what I’ve been using the last couple of years as I worked on Crusade and now Purge. But none of what I needed was in that notebook. So I went to my shelf, thumbing through journal after journal. All the way back to the thin traveler’s style notebooks with the flimsy paper. (I don’t use them any longer–I hate it when the ink ghosts or bleeds through to the other side.) My horror and shame grew as I kept going back further and further.

To September 2021.

Geez. No wonder I can’t remember what I intended to do next for Helayna!

Granted, I was going through Hel myself back then. My divorce wasn’t final. He was still dragging me to court. I was having to pay for everything, both our kids (including college) and his bills, while unable to publish much for fear it’d add another copyright into the mess. Giving him another weapon to come after me.

But Helayna deserved better.

Even the 13,000+ words I had was pretty rough, to be honest. You wouldn’t think four years would make that much of a difference in my writing style, but it definitely did, at least in her case. I’ve edited those words pretty hard, and now I’m trying to get through that sex scene from Hel.

You know I’ve written an 8k sex scene before. For a vampire queen working her way through her Blood, it can get a little… messy. Laughs.

A week later, and I’m still struggling. Last night, I finally set the scene aside and pulled out her prequel and book one (now in print!) to re-read everything. Just to get it all back in my head. What her intimacy journey had been like with her Blood so far. What their hang ups and insecurities were. What they all needed. What they were scared of.

Now well armed, I’m back in the trenches. Though I’m certainly giving “come hell or high water…” a new meaning.

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The New Era Begins

I’m home from Literary Love Savannah, and this time, I didn’t have an Evil Day Job to immediately get back to!

Instead, I spent yesterday luxuriating in some new stickers and creating my plan through July 31st. Give me a purple pen, sticky notes, washi, and stickers, and I’ll prepare for book world domination.

It’s ridiculous how excited I was to start my day yesterday — because of the stickers. I didn’t need an alarm. Once Honey Bun was up, I hopped out of bed and got busy printing my new pages for the rest of July. I’m using a combination of HB90 Daily pages (on the left) and Sarra’s Rough Draft Challenge notebook (on the right). I’m using it both to sketch out my day–and then also hold myself accountable with how I actually spent my time. When I got up. How long of a lunch break I took. When I got tired or distracted.

The RDC pages work best for a single story, and I’m concurrently working on several, so it’s not ideal. I may tweak this process for August, maybe even a separate RDC page for each book? Though that seems a little extreme, even for me. Especially since each book already has its own place in my bullet journals to record the sprint tallies, notes, and any journaling thoughts I want to capture.

Yes, bullet journalS, plural. Right now, I’m actively working in four different journals, and I’ve got at least two others started for different projects. I do combine ideas into journals once they get going, mixed with general brain dumps and actual journal pages. Once a series reaches a certain size, it really needs its own. The House Isador journal is almost completely full. I probably won’t even try re-copying all of the names and characters over to a new journal, but will keep the old one as the reference and add new pages in the second.

The Dynosauros world got its own journal with the completion of Monstrous Baby. And yeah, I started Monstrous Rampage today.

I’m also about 2/3 of the way through a short story for Guillaume in the Headless anthology.

I pulled out Blizzard Bound’s journal (combined with other stuff currently) and will prepare for a re-read and pick up that project again this week.

Once Guillaume’s story is done, I intend to re-read what I’ve got for Queen’s Purge, and maybe even Crusade, so it’s all fresh. Though I may also have to work on Helayna and Karmen’s stories concurrently once I get a bit further in Shara’s plot.

See why I need so many journals? I can’t keep it all in my head any more.

I’m also returning to my Kanban board for admin tasks, though it’s not fully set up yet. I used it to prepare for LLS and still have some outstanding tasks I need to wrap up now that I’m home. Like a retirement party! I’m planning to write in the morning and early afternoon, and then do admin tasks in the late afternoon before dinner. Molly and I still Zoom most weeknights too with a goal of two more evening sprints.

So I have no excuse for not getting a shit ton of stuff done this July.

Despite it only being the 16th, I’ve already written more this July than I did the entire month last year, even with taking last week off for LLS. July is historically a really hard month for me (so is August) but with enough stickers….

I can do anything.

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A Jurassic Baby

I honestly wasn’t going to write more in the Dynosauros series. I planned a trilogy. That’s what I wrote. I was happy with the way it ended.

However… I kept getting questions and ideas in my head. I wanted to see how the squad handled a baby. I wanted more Axxol. I wanted to see Natalie step more fully into her new reality. I wanted to see Akylla grow.

One thing lead to another, and now Monstrous Baby is here.

This series is just so FUN I couldn’t help myself. Dinosaurs running amuck. Out of this galaxy appendages. More aliens. I had a blast, though it did take me way longer than I hoped to finish the book.

Full disclosure, I fully plan to write more now, with Holly’s story starting in Monstrous Rampage. I’ve actually already plotted out (loosely) her first book.

I’ve also commissioned an artist to illustrate the guys, and I’m making character cards that I’ll have available at LLS, and future, here on the website (once the full set is completed).

Monstrous Baby

I delivered our beautiful alien-human baby, but now we have to figure out how to stay alive.

After thousands of years, dyni have successfully mated and bred young in the wild with a human. Me.

It’s crazy how fast my life has changed. Instead of searching for lost civilizations, I’m the mother of a dynos hybrid. Moments after she was born, Akylla could join the cybernetic grid my mates use to communicate. We don’t know what she’ll be capable of yet, but she’s absolutely fearless, brilliant, feral, and growing in leaps and bounds. Watching her wrap five terrifyingly huge super-soldier killing machines around her pinkie is hilarious.

However, we will never be safe. Draco Sirius Command knows their former assets have rebelled—and successfully bred offspring they don’t own and can’t control.

I won’t allow them to have my baby. She won’t grow up in a laboratory or endure re-programming like the squad in between missions. I may only be human, but I’ve got secrets of my own that I’m only just now learning to use.

They won’t take us alive.

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Special KickStarter Projects

I’m excited to be participating in two special projects this summer.

First up, we have Hot Winter Nights, a PNR Advent box. I’m offering a book that hasn’t been in print before, along with 29 other authors. If you love spicy paranormal romances, unwrap either 15 or 30 presents for yourself this holiday season.

Second, I’m working on a special edition Their Vampire Queen collection that will be available late July.

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Shara’s Finally Back

It’s been a long time coming. Longer than I intended. But Shara Isador is finally back. On May 3rd, grab Queen’s Crusade to continue her story!

Now for the long-winded post…

I’ve talked a little about the divorce and how ugly things were in 2019. Before that too, but once the divorce paperwork was filed, it got even nastier. Shara went into hiding and I locked her down. Hard. I had to keep her safe.

(I had to keep myself safe.)

Slowly, things got mostly better but he continued to take me back to court over. And over. And over. Finally I got a final resolution – so I thought – and then he filed a new motion. It was crazy. I couldn’t do anything. My life was in limbo. Which put Shara in limbo too. I still wrote, but I couldn’t get her to talk at all. Everything was “temporary.” Even the rental where we lived. I couldn’t afford to move until I knew what was going to happen.

Last year was better. I finally got the all clear to start my life. I moved forward with building my little red house on the Burkhart farm. But of course that took longer than I expected too, and while a dream come true, it was stressful making so many decisions. Then I ended up living with my dad for five months rather than a few weeks. All my clothes and books and shipping supplies went into storage. I had to go buy winter clothes because it was summer when I moved in with him. I had one suitcase and whatever I brought home from Literary Love Savannah in July.

I love my Dad and I’m so grateful he let me stay with him. But it wasn’t MY space, you know? It was hard to establish any kind of writing routine. I worked and slept in the same bedroom. I was a guest, and I didn’t want to lock myself away to write all night after working all day. I was also going through Evil Day Job interviewing for a new position (since Retirement had been sold) and that skyrocketed my stress levels off the charts. Not knowing if I’d still have a job after 29 years. Not knowing which team I might end up with. My mind was consumed with what ifs and contingency plans.

At 53, I was basically homeless and starting over with my professional career. It sucked. Big time.

However, Shara finally started to whisper to me again. I had enough to write the first chapter, and I read it at the House Isador party at LLS in July. Temporary housing made it extremely difficult for me to get into any kind of regular writing routine, so I really couldn’t work on her story much until I moved into my house just after Christmas.

On Jan 2nd, I started Chapter Two of Queen’s Crusade. I only missed 9 days of writing until I finished the first draft on March 31. (Considering I only managed to write 2k TOTAL in July of 2023, I was pretty pleased with that!) I did things a little different this time. I made myself SIT on the draft rather than race to publish. I took my time. I wrote another 12k of extra scenes for the second draft, and then I started the bonus Queen Takes Blood scenes immediately (coming soon). I wanted all of it done and ready before I finally hit publish.

No last-minute deadline scrambling. For one, I’m too old for that shit. And second, Shara–and you–deserve my best. Especially after waiting so long. It was hard to sit on my hands. I felt like the kid who’d saved up all her allowance to buy the best Christmas present ever, and I CAN’T WAIT for you to open it!

But this time, I’ll have the print version ready immediately. Patreon copies already went out. The newsletter bonus will be finished and ready to go. And best/most important of all, I think you’ll be way happier with the book and especially the ending.

Endings aren’t my strong suit. Probably because I’m so excited to FINISH. I don’t like to add “superfluous” scenes once the plot scenes are resolved. However, those extra details add richness and depth to the story, and I think you’ll be really pleased with those extra details.

I can say that I really think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever written. It’s definitely one of the longest at 118K (not including the Blood prequels).

Now the nerves begin to set in. I hope you love Queen’s Crusade as much as I love it.

Long live House Isador!