'Achille and Florian': Done (and Updated Cover Art)

My side project is finally done after over a year of working on it and then going back to redo huge chunks of it. It started out practically a PWP with no real story holding it together, hence my decision to trunk it and let it sit for a while until I figured out how best to make it work. The book being a PWP (or "Plot? What Plot?") was actually much harder for me to work with because I'm not a pure erotica writer. I can write sex scenes, but they can't be the only thing in the story, and I do find it much more difficult to tackle.

I'm glad I went for it, though. I really am. It bit me hard in the ass, but I appreciated the challenge, and after a bit of time with the story, I did find my rhythm. 

One thing that squirmed through my fingers was the book length. I'd at first planned for this to be another long novella -- even shorter than my usual stuff. But with the inclusion of a relatively complex plot, the book's going to be a novel by the time I'm done with the edits and revisions. There are several chapters that tell too much, and those need to be broken apart and turned into passages that show instead, which will add to the length.

Not complaining. I do read my backlist now and then, and that distance of time between writing and reading allows me to pick out problems that I'd been blind to despite multiple passes prior to publishing. I'm well aware of my weaknesses, and I'm hoping to do better with my future projects. Some books are worse than others in exhibiting these problematic writing tendencies of mine, but all I can do now is move forward with those in mind so as not to make the same mistakes.

Oddly enough, it's been an easier task, tackling those in this instance, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because Achille and Florian is so far out of my comfort zone that I'm not sunk in familiarity and, therefore, more mentally passive when it comes to how I work out a scene. If that makes any sense. 

Admitting that also makes me wonder if I should make this a more regular thing but not to the same extent as my usual books in order to keep my writing skills sharp. I'm able to write for the Grotesqueries collection pretty frequently and steadily. My NC-17 stories, though, require a lot more time and patience with myself (because sex scenes and taboo subjects). If this turns into something kind of expected, there'll be a much wider gap between them compared to my long novellas. 

Oh, yes -- I updated the cover art! 

This look is more in line with the fantasy / historical fantasy / fairy tale aspect of the story, and the tagline is also indicative of the tone. There's a good bit of dry humor worked into the plot because the story requires moments of levity, and as you know, I love writing humor and even prefer it. I'd use it more often for my long novellas, but most of the plots tend to be dark, so humor in almost all of those books is way more muted. 

At any rate, here you go. It'll be released sometime next month, and as it's a novel, I'm not putting together a gallery page for it. Also it's NC-17, so definitely not going there. The release announcement, though, will provide some background info and all that good stuff that readers normally get from the gallery pages, so there's that. 

And as an addendum, I've settled on the title Ouroboros for the next book in my "naughty series" in the event I do end up working on it. I was doubtful at first because of how I thought readers might take Achille and Florian, but now that I've succeeded in finishing something I never believed I'd ever write, I'm feeling a little more confident in my ability to tackle another story regardless of reader response to the first book. So we'll see. I do need to go back and work on Valérian before I can think more about it. Also I need to recover from using writing muscles I rarely ever use. 

Even More Updates (a Variety of)

Where do I even start? Let's go with the calendar because it's been tweaked over and over again, and now I finally settled on something concrete. 

Firstly, as mentioned before, life continues to happen, and it's affecting my forward push with my writing. Also, Valérian's sprouting pretty aggressive appendages despite being on track insofar as the story outline goes. It requires way more pruning and stuff than I at first anticipated.

So in response to the life situation, I've decided to revert back to the old six-month schedule. Now it isn't ideal in terms of keeping Draft2Digital from dinging me for low sales, but even with a more frequent release calendar, they'll still ding me, anyway, because my sales are low, no matter what. So if they're going to punish me, regardless, I might as well take good care of myself along the way while still keeping my options open when it comes to distribution platforms. 

My connection with D2D will ultimately depend on how well my side project turns out, but more on that in a bit.

At any rate, I'm trying to cover my bases and not only take good care of my health and ensure I'm still able to keep writing all these stories percolating in my head, but also pave the way for an eventual removal from D2D if it comes to that. I think if I were to go back to Payhip for direct sales, it'll have to be an all-or-nothing situation in that if I sell direct, I have to take the plunge and delist all of my books from D2D's distribution platforms. 

At least if I didn't sell a single copy via Payhip, I won't get penalized for it. I just won't get paid, and that's it. The only downside to this is print sales, which I need to think more about. I certainly don't want to go through KDP for it. 

And this segues into the Valérian problem. 

I went back and converted the unfinished draft for me to read and review on my e-reader app, which is really a good way of seeing how the book will ultimately look. The long and short of it is that even with the overhaul I gave the book, it's STILL problematic, and I know why. That said, fixing the book also means giving it another overhaul, and it's almost a complete rewrite. 

So much for being on track for a Nov. 1 release, eh?

Anyway, with my 6-month calendar now set in stone, the book will get pushed one more time for a Jan. 1, 2027 release (God willing, anyway). That'll allow me time to practically start over with it and fix whatever's already written in order for it to get back on the right path. It's going to be too long of a post for me to explain exactly where the train derailed, but I own the mistake completely and will take care to set things right. 

And if that requires more time? Then Feb. 1, it is. But the fact of the matter is that I want to take my time now for whatever I'm working on because of all those things that had happened in the recent past that really threw me off my game. I've managed to claw my way back by setting Valérian aside and taking up the side project to clear my head, and it's going to be a slow-burning process for me from this point on.

To that end, I'm also removing dates from the rest of the books on my plate. Everything following Valérian is tagged with TBA on my Book List page. The six-month calendar will still be followed, but the final dates won't be set in case of delays and rewrites like this.  

And, secondly, here's a more hopeful and fun update. 

Behold me, taking the plunge and sharing this formerly secret side project of mine (I can do this now because I've just completed the climactic scene, and it's all just the resolution and epilogue -- if any -- left). So! 

This is the cover art I put together. I'm careful not to use anyone's actual art because I run the risk of them demanding that I stop using it BECAUSE of the nature of the book. That's even if I were to purchase the license to use the image files, which I usually do for my other books. I'm treading risky waters in this case, and it'll be true for future books under this new pseudonym if things pan out.

Why risky? Because the book deals with taboo subjects and relationships -- as in all-out taboo stuff. There's a plot, of course, because I'm not a PWP writer, and when it comes to erotica, I need something to hang sex scenes off of. 

And why in holy hell did I do this? 

Because I had a story idea, and I wanted to exercise my writing muscles by tackling a genre that I've never done before. The erotic angle of the book (and it's an erotic fantasy or fairy tale, if you will) is also something I wanted to take on and explore because I'm not a writer who does sex scenes in her books. I can read them, of course, but I rarely, if ever, write them -- especially nowadays with my long novellas forcing me to keep my eye on brevity while telling a complete story.

The taboo nature of this book is also the reason why it will be available only from one store: Smashwords. It's because that's the only place where taboo erotica is allowed, so if anyone's morbidly curious about it, I'm afraid you'll need to sign up for an account there. The great thing about Smashwords is that all of the e-books are DRM-free, so you can still convert them to Amazon's proprietary format if you prefer to read them via your Kindle device or app. That's what I do with my .epub files. 

You'll also notice I'm using a different pseudonym here. That's to separate this book from the rest of my backlist, though I might still be persuaded to change it back to Hayden Thorne. Here's some trivia for you: the pseudonym is actually as close to my real name as you can get. Lourdes is part of my full Christian name, and Ray is my hubby's middle name. 

I actually suck at coming up with pen names for myself, but as long as my writing identity still maintains the distance between that persona and my RL identity, I'll take it. 

I do have another story idea under this super-naughty umbrella, but I'm in no rush to get started on it. It's darker and more in line with my favorite gothic horror genre, but there's still a lot of forbidden-ness running around, plot-wise. Once I release Achille and Florian and monitor its numbers on Smashwords, I might move forward with the second book (a standalone, btw). For someone who's not an erotica writer, books like this are an absolute challenge to write, so I'd like to see how well readers take to this one. I do hope I've managed to strike the right balance, at least. 

Anyway, I'll talk more about this book as I go. I'm hoping to get this published sometime next month (again, no set date) since I've been working on this story on and off for over a year now, and there's not much for me to tweak at this point (also I've been editing as I go). 

Fingers crossed.  

Is Summer Over Yet?

Took me a while to find the time to update my blog, but better late than never, I guess. My vacation went well even though it was way too short for me to feel the benefits, but this I can easily say, though: I miss the Sierras. I love the mountains so much, it's depressing as hell to be back in civilization. The Bay Area will always have a special place in my heart, of course, but I didn't realize just how much I need the silence of Nature until I went back to my favorite haunts.

Next year will, hopefully, be better planned (and a longer break).

In the meantime, I'm currently working to finish my side project, which is looking more and more like a short novel in the low 50K-word range. I hope to have something pretty solid to share here in the next couple or so weeks since it's a book I also would like to release before Valérian. 

I haven't updated my Book News page with the tweaked release dates for my upcoming books, but I hope to sort all that out eventually. At this point I know better than to make promises because I almost always go back on them (because life happens). 

Another thing I'd like to add is the very, very real possibility of me again going back to either five-month release calendars or even six-month releases. Having aged another year and having recently lost my mother (heart failure brought on by her age) just before my birthday, I'm really feeling time weighing down on me. I talk a good game when it comes to self-care, but I never really follow through since I've been hard-wired to just keep going, no matter what, as long as I'm able. 

Is that a Virgo thing? I think it's a Virgo thing. 

Anyway, mortality (aging, at least, if you don't want to see me get all morbid on you) is a fact I have to make room for now, and I'm not superhuman. I'll be making my final decision before I update my Book News page, and then we can go from there. 

 

A Slight Tweak

I'll be going away next week for my vacation, which means things'll be on hold for a bit. As usual, once I make public the status of my WiP, the more I risk it, and it's the same with Valérian now.

I had to pull back and delete a couple of chapters (I expected to hack off more than those) and revise a couple of others (again, I expected to overhaul more) because this baby is growing more tentacles than I can manage. I'm trying to wrestle it back into the story I had planned for it, but its need to sprout new appendages is out of control. 

So! 

I need to set it aside and let it simmer for a bit while I go back to my notes and rework stuff. If this book ends up longer than 50K words, I'd rather have it be so at a minimum. Again, I settled down happily in the long novella corner of fiction-writing for a reason: no more sprawling novels or series, just tightly told stories that are also complex enough to justify their existence. 

So I'm opening up the release date to encompass Dec. 1. That allows me enough wiggle room with the vacation thing and the simmering thing, and I'll give you all (hopefully) a good book in the end. 

I'm thinking of taking a month-long break from Valérian to clear my head of the clutter. In the meantime, I can distract myself with the mystery side project I have going, which I can complete within a month (it's almost there!), and then I'll be talking about it here. 

I haven't updated my Book News page yet with the tentative calendar, but I will this weekend. It does need a bit of an update, regardless.  

Birthday Sale at Smashwords

image from Pinterest

Awright! My birthday is Aug. 26, and since we're about midway through the month (plus we just had a solar eclipse on the 12th), I figured I should jump right in and do this. 

This is strictly over at Smashwords, where all of my books that aren't novellas (priced at 99 cents) are now 50% off the list price through the end of September. 

And we have a coupon: CJ6KR

Use that code when purchasing any of my novels and omnibuses over there. There are also no limits as to how many books you can purchase with the coupon, so have at it! 

For my author page over there, go to this link. And as always, thank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy your book(s)!