Category: The Writing

For personal reasons I can’t yet divulge entirely, I’ve been forced to cut back on my production this summer.

At first, I was angry. I had so much to do. So many plans that had to be put on the back burner. This was going to set me back months, maybe longer. Would hot trends even be hot in 3 months? 6? A year?

If you’ve been in publishing long, you know the answer to that.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I could still write ahead and have a whole bunch of stories ready to go. But the reality of all the stress I was (and still am) under slapped me in the face so hard it took my breath away, as well as my words. It was hard to be productive when I knew I couldn’t do anything with it. It was hard to focus when I was under so much stress. It was hard to be motivated when my personal life was in complete upheaval.

I need stability. But I also need deadlines. These are elements of my personality that I have been trying to embrace.

I had neither.

So I stewed for awhile. I cursed. I tried to come up with a plan and motivate myself. I created a new bujo and used a bunch of Washi tape to make it pretty. It was better than nothing — but I still wasn’t getting a lot of words. If I was lucky, I could get about 250-500 words — if I succeeded in even opening the file! — on the Princess Takes Unicorns prequel I’ve been working on for like a year. It’s only a short story. Why couldn’t I finish it?

Sigh.

I didn’t want to give myself a heart attack or stroke from the stress — or even cancer or other illnesses. (I watched Heal on Netflix.) So I was forced to slowly begin to work on ME not a story. My first efforts were to begin meditation again. Not everyday, but more frequently. I ordered an “I AM” journal and worked on my gratitude and affirmations. I came up with a mantra that I repeated when I was stressed or upset. Over and over and over, because yeah, it’s been a rough few months. I started writing down affirmations in a spare journal as often as I could remember to do it. Just free-writing a whole page as often as possible.

I started listening to that still voice inside me. I started trusting in my gut. I went through a forgiveness process and actually burned the paper where I’d written my hurt down. Not once but several times lol.

I took more long baths with candles and bath bombs. I read more. I indulged in Netflix horror movies. I bought some incense and started a little ritual when I went to my computer to help me relax, even if I didn’t manage any words.

And I started doing the things I *knew* I should do to help with productivity. I just had resistance to them. Mainly, low-key sprints and setting a timer.

A lot of writers use sprints and are very successful with them – but I have to be careful. I have just enough achiever in my strengths that I want to be the best. I want to do well. I want to be the fastest. And if I’m not, I avoid it. I put immense pressure on myself to type like a mad person when that timer goes off – and if I’m mentally not in the place to achieve a lot of words, I don’t want to do it. I avoid it. Because I know I’ll be disappointed in myself.

This took a mind shift, but I think I’m finally in a better place. I don’t use the timer so much to “sprint” but to focus. The word count doesn’t matter. It only matters that I’m working on ONLY my story during that time. If I’m reading and editing, that’s okay. If I’m just adding a few lines, that’s okay. If I’m writing slowly and relaxed… THAT’S OKAY! I just need to dedicate the TIME to do the work.

The words started to come. Slowly, yes, but the words are flowing again. It’s more of a gentle trickle than the rushing Amazon River, but I’ll take it. I’m learning to embrace that ebb and flow better.

In all of this, I finally realized exactly how close to burnout I probably was. Forcing myself to write while under this major stress would have probably pushed me over the brink. I don’t know how long my muse would have been incapacitated if I’d kept pushing and forcing the words over the summer. I had all the classic signs of burnout:

• difficulty focusing
• tired all the time
• no motivation
• no creativity
• irritability
• wanting to veg and binge Netflix

Granted, the Homelife stress has been extremely high for years and was certainly contributing to the approach of burnout. But I also wasn’t taking good care of my muse. That’s why Checkmate and Triune took me soooooo long. I struggled to focus. I had a lot of “I don’t wanna” and I didn’t know why or how to get over it.

Usually for me, the more pressure I apply and the tighter the deadlines, the better I perform. Usually. So it was hard for me to admit that I was probably not in a good place. My mind kept insisting that I should just push harder. My “feelings” were just feelings and I should be able to write just as much even with my Homelife exploding around me.

Not.

So while it has been a frustrating summer… I can also look back and admit that I was exactly where I needed to be. I needed to spend these months forming some new self-care habits. I needed the down time. While the Homelife stress isn’t any better yet (though things are in progress and I hope it can resolve in the next few months), I have found my stride with writing. Yes, it’s slower. But that’s okay. The flow is there. I’ve almost finished the short prequel and I plan to spend the first 3 weeks of October expanding Queen Takes Camelot.

Yes, I know. After all my talk above about stress, I set a fairly tight pre-order date! But I need the pressure to make sure I actually focus and work, and I have other pressing reasons for that deadline.

It’ll be a good test to see if my new habits will continue to help me keep moving forward, manage the stress, and still find space in my head to be creative. I’ve got a checklist I’m trying to do every single day, both for sprints and for self care. I may post more often in Oct just as an accountability.

Let the words FLOW!

At the end of Queen Takes Triune, I told you that Shara needed a break. She needed downtime with her Blood, to rest and play and just simply BE Shara. She can’t face the next trial until the other queens come to the table.

All of that is true.

But there’s more.

People ask me things like How many more books will there be? Is Helayna Ironheart going to be a Triune queen? Who are the other Triune queens? How many books will there be? Who’s the next bad guy?

And I’m like uh…. I don’t know. Not until THEY TELL ME.

I know that sounds crazy but I’ve learned over the years to sit back and let the story come to me – rather than me chasing and forcing it to happen. A lot of this is personality. It’s just how I’m wired.

I’m a high INPUT and LEARNER personality. I’m also on the cusp between FEELING and THINKING, as well as JUDGING and PERCEIVING. (I think it’s my Gemini nature – I pull on either side depending on what I need. I’m a writer – but I’m also analytical and work as a computer programmer.) That means that most days I consider myself an INFP on the Myer-Briggs personality scale, but I also sometimes have other qualities (INFJ, INTP, INTJ) driven by my analytic side.

I can sometimes apply the analytic side to writing and make things happen, but generally, it’s best for my writing if I LET it happen. If I let my emotions and intuition guide me, I feel like more “magic” happens, and that’s what I love most about writing. I love it when pieces come together in a magical, special way that just ARE. They weren’t planned out.

I honestly didn’t know why xyz was important. I just knew it was needed. Example: I still don’t know what special thing Kevin had written into his conciliarius contract with House Isador. I just know there WAS something special and unique and when it’s important and affects the plot, it will be there waiting for me to know.

That’s great and all, but it makes it hard to explain to you when the next book(s) will be here and which queen will do what, because I honestly have no idea until they show up and tell me what’s going on. So when I said Shara needed a break, that was true. But I also needed time for my subconscious to start working on some of these other details. I needed time to let some things unfold magically in my head that I wasn’t even aware of.

I need time to let those ideas bubble in the background while I indulge my LEARNER and INPUT until the well is full again and overflows in a deluge. So maybe I’m making bracelets, crocheting something, watching a new show (I’m really enjoying Carnival Row), making shirts for Penned Con, etc. while I’m also reading and researching general things. Like… death masks. Pretty cool stuff. Ancient mythologies (you know how much I love them already.) And…

Boom, something triggers me, in a good way, and I start to know things. I don’t know why these things are true yet, but I know they’re important, so I write them down. Then more comes, maybe while I’m in the tub, or as I’m trying to fall asleep at night, and I start to get excited, because I know the story is finally coming. I can help this process along sometimes by working on other things (nothing makes one idea perk up like when I set a deadline for something ELSE because let’s make this as complicated and pressure filled as possible. That good old “P” in INFP.)

So that’s why I’ve been getting through some tasks that have been on my to-do list for awhile, like re-releasing Lady Wyre. Because I knew the best way to get these silent queens to show up and start talking is to tell them to shut up while I do something else. Reverse psychology for the win!

This is a long-ass way of saying that I have made some decisions on the future of Their Vampire Queen. Three queens have announced themselves as Triune candidates and are willing to step up to the table (literally!) and help Shara with the future.

I’ll be posting more details in the Triune group over the next few months and even opening up some polls etc if you’d like to play along with titles or things like that. It’s too early to set dates yet, but these queens will hopefully be arriving early next year.

The rest of this year…

Things are complicated by some personal shit going on. I’ve had to put a brake on several projects until I get my life sorted out and finalized. However, my plan of attack for the rest of the year in no particular order (you know that if I type this out that it will actually cause a rift in the time-space continuum and nothing will go according to plan but I’m going to try anyway):

• Princess Takes Unicorns prequel finalized (up to some events that drove Princess Takes Academy).
• Lady Wyre’s Rebels (third NEW book for Lady Wyre to finish her incomplete trilogy)
• Queen Takes Camelot – expanded

While these things are slowly being worked on, I will also be letting the three queens chat in the back of my head and building some momentum until they’re ready to break free. Goddess let it be soon!

With the re-release of Lady Wyre’s stories coming over the next few months (Lady Wyre’s Regret is available free right now, and Lady Doctor Wyre re-releases August 26th), I thought I’d talk a little about these books for the newer people who may not have been around in 2011 when she first came to be.

First of all, it astounds me that she’s EIGHT years old. It just doesn’t seem possible.

Your first question may be why on earth did I choose the Regency period for a SF mash-up?

My first actual published story was a Regency short story in a now defunct ezine. Yep I know. Given Shara’s dark and bloody story, that may surprise you lol. But when I was younger, I read a TON of Regencies. I read EVERY Regency Signet my small-town country library had on the shelf. Years later, I loved Amanda Quick. I loved the gowns and titles, the stories of wallflowers and rakes, Dukes and nannies. And of course I loved the great Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

But I’m not an historical writer. I can (and did) research the time period, but it’s not my speciality. I was afraid of making title mistakes especially. But they were so fun – much more fun than the more strict and staid Victorian period.

When steampunk began to rise in popularity, I was intrigued, definitely. But I couldn’t get into the Victorian period at all. I also didn’t really care for the “steam” aspect – which is kinda important for steampunk! Duh. But it got my brain bursting with ideas.

What if… Regency ladies ran amok in space? Even better – what if ladies REIGNED in space? Because the number one thing that always irritates me is patriarchy in SF. Come on, people! There are so many reasons that women could and should be more powerful than in a traditional patriarchal society! Let’s play. Let’s have some fun and encourage women in sciences and positions of power. Let’s make that the NORM.

So I knew I wanted the main character to be a lady. A duchess, naturally. But I also wanted her to be special. I took some elements of Doctor Who (which is why she’s Lady Doctor Wyre), the fun outlaw adventure aspect from Firefly, and the elements of Regency Society that I enjoyed – and turned them on their head. Instead of the Mamas hot on the heels of the dashing young (rich) lord for their daughters, they’re hot on the heels of the dashing powerful (rich) ladies for their blushing sons.

Lady Wyre is just the beginning of what I hoped to do in this world.

But circumstances were stacked against her. The main problem, I think, was that I was stretched over too many series at too many publishers at the time. I took over a year to release the next stories each time, and that’s just too slow, even back in 2011. We also struggled with marketing. We tried marketing her as steampunk – but she’s NOT steampunk. So it just never took off like we hoped, even though Lady Doctor Wyre was nominated for a Romantic Times Book Reviews award. Then, of course, Samhain went out of business entirely, and I was adrift and unsure what I wanted to do.

So hopefully I can correct those mistakes this time around and give her a better chance at success. I love this story world too much to let her languish on my hard drive any longer!

If you’ve been waiting on an update for Lady Wyre, REJOICE!

Lady Doctor Wyre was originally published in 2011 by Samhain. When they went out of business in 2016/2017, I was indecisive about how I wanted to proceed with republishing the series. Then Shara took off, and I just didn’t have time to come back to Lady Wyre.

She’s been languishing long enough.

Over the next few months, I’m going to republish Lady Doctor Wyre, Lord Regret’s Price, Her Grace’s Stable, and finally, cap off the relaunch with a new book, Lady Wyre’s Rebels. If the relaunch does well, I’ll plan to write some of the other books I wanted to do in this series, like the Deathright and Seven Crows (working titles) I had planned.

For now, you can grab a copy of the free prequel, Lady Wyre’s Regret, to learn more about this series.

It’s been a busy week – so busy I forgot to even list out what all came out this week!

Queen Takes Darkness is now available! This is a short novella featuring Helayna Ironheart – the wolf king’s sister you met briefly in Queen Takes Triune. This story will be included in the MORE print anthology available exclusively at Literary Love Savannah in July. Though you can order a copy directly from me if you’d like. I’ll be getting a link set up on the Shop shortly.

Queen Takes Rook is also now available in audio! Even better, Queen Takes Checkmate will release next month. I’m so glad this series continues to be made available in the audio format.

Releasing today, Seduced by Myths includes a short novella from me titled, “On Death’s Wings.” This is a re-imagining of Beautiful Death, written the way I wished I could have written it in 2005.

I’m hard at work on adding some fresh new bonus content to add to “Queen Takes Alpha,” “Queen Takes Twins,” and “Queen Takes A Late Christmas,” which were all previously released in Between the Sheets anthologies (and are no longer available). Queen Takes More will be available the first week of June.

And finally, WHEW! I told you it was a busy week! The pre-order for a new project is now up. Magic & Mayhem is an Academy-themed boxed set that will include our favorite unicorn vampire princess. I don’t have the title for Xochitl’s story yet, but I can’t wait to dig in to her story.

If you’ve been waiting to get your complete set of Their Vampire Queen books, I’ve finally got the bundles loaded. Choose just the six main books, tote and shirt – or add a bracelet or coffee mug if you’d like. All shipping is US priority shipping.

I’ll be loading the shirts separately in a few minutes! That way if you already have the books, you can grab just the shirt.

Next up, I’ll be adding House Ironheart and Mythomorphoses wear!

Part of the Writer’s Journey is figuring out how to improve my process. I want to write my BEST books every time – but also turn them around FASTER. I don’t want to give you books that you’re not satisfied with, or aren’t my best work. Yet I also need to make sure I’m not wasting my time, goofing off playing games or whatever (though sometimes the best way to get around a mental block is to do something else and let my sub-conscious mind work on it).

I’ve been trying to do a better job with keeping a kanban board on my wall over my writing area. We keep electronic boards for the Evil Day Job, but for my writing stuff, I really like having the physical board. I wasn’t the best at keeping this updated in Q1. e.g. some of the notes are from Dec, but I kept them up because I was lazy.

But at a glance, I can definitely get a good idea of what I have coming up, and what I *finally* finished – e.g. look at all those stickies of word counts! That was for Queen Takes Triune. You can see that toward the end, I just quit with the notes, because I had the end in sight. (The book ended up crossing 90k).

Anyway, I’m getting ready to clear the board and so thought I’d grab a picture of it first.

Why, yes, that Europe song is on my playlist! Along with Never Be the Same (Camila Cabello), Permanent (Spag Heddy), Glitter & Gold (Barns Courtney), The Greatest Show theme song, and Hurricane from Hamilton.

It’s the final countdown. The last book for Shara’s main arc (though trust me, I have lots more stories percolating in Their Vampire Queen’s world with new queens, and Shara will obviously play a huge part).

Ra has it coming, and Shara fucking Isador will deliver.

This month is all about finishing the series I started just a little over a year ago. (I bought the cover in June and had the first glimmer of an idea then.) My plate is cleared. Queen Takes Jaguars is finished, and will be included in the Realms & Rebels boxed set in August.

I want to be finished with Checkmate *before* I head out to Literary Love Savannah the last week of July. It’d be terrific if I could release before then – but we’ll see. I do still have a long ways to go and I’m quickly running out of July.

Don’t look at the pic if you don’t want to be spoiled, though I admit, it’s pretty sparse. This is how I’ve started “plotting.” I say that loosely, because even I don’t know what all of the notes mean yet. But I sit down and jot out what I want to cover on 2 pages in my traveler’s notebook. That’s it. Note: this doesn’t include the scenes I’ve already written. I already had them figured out. This is what I have left.

I’ll say that again. I have no idea what some of these mean – I just know they’re important. The magic will guide me when I get there. But you can see that I have a TON of plot to get through yet.

So I’d better get busy.

 Shara and her men are back and the hits (and heat and blood) just keep on coming. (snickers)

Queen Takes Rook went live last night, but it has really taken some time for the links to filter through the Amazon mazes. People were having a hard time finding it, and at one point, we joked we’d broken Amazon!  We didn’t of course but it was fun.

The reviews are pouring in and I’m just dumbfounded and awed. Thank you, each and every person, who’s picked up a copy and left a review already! It makes me smile to see comments like “best in the series so far,” because I truly want each book to be better and better.

Shara’s taking us on one crazy ride.

And here’s the funniest part. All four books? Happen in the span of a month. Yet she’s already killed a thrall, turned into a Cobra Queen, dragged Leviathan out of his prison, killed some vicious ants, taken her first sibling, gained ten Blood (including five-hundred-year-old virgin twins), and…

Well. I won’t spoil anything. Go read it!