Aaaannd It's Up for Pre-Order ('Achille and Florian')

So! My side project is complete and uploaded to Smashwords for pre-orders. You can check out the book page over here for warnings and all that fun stuff. Now I don't know if anyone without a Smashwords account can see the page, but it IS in a "hidden" category because of it contents. 

If you do have a Smashwords account, you'll need to go and update the erotica filter on your account page to include all erotica, not just mainstream, in order to see all the "hidden" books.  

I'm sticking to my new pseudonym for the author name. I'm also now planning to move forward with my sort of follow-up book in the "naughty, naughty" collection (which I've titled Ouroboros) under the same name, and with this surprising development -- and, no, never have I even considered trying out taboo erotica at any point since 2008 -- the doors are now open a teeny bit wider.

Please note that "planning" is one thing. "Doing" is another. I'd love to challenge myself again, of course, but it might take longer than my usual books, and it might still fall through. This is a completely different ball game I'm talking about, so yeah. Heavy emphasis on "planning" for now, not actually "doing". 

Now granted it was a difficult process for me since I'm not a pure erotica writer, but I found my stride after a false start, and at least now I know where my strengths lie at least where stories in this genre are concerned. I did throw everything in there if only to learn first hand what I'm comfortable writing about. If you look at the book's warnings as well as the search tags I used, you'll know how far I went. To what extent I was successful in achieving a balance between story, sensuality, and titillation, I hope I got the job done. 😅 It's now up to the readers to decide. 

Oh, yes, I did another update to the cover art:

The book's release date is October 1. I'll also be updating my site / blog with links to this new project of mine, but it'll be sometime closer to the publication day. 

And now to restore myself and go back to Valérian.  

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

My side project is finally done after over a year of working on it (on and off) and then going back to rewriting it entirely. 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 issues 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 brain sharp. I'm able to write for the Grotesqueries collection pretty frequently and steadily, and taking on new stories under this umbrella is a no-brainer but is overly comfortable like wearing broken-in favorite shoes. 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)!  

Some Updates: 'Valérian' and a Side Project

So Valérian is more than halfway done, but at the same time, it isn't. And it's making me tear my hair out. I didn't anticipate the story to be this complex, and I think it's because the titular character is actually a side character, which leaves Roland (the book's MC) learning about Valérian's movements in a far-off place at the same time as the readers. 

The book, as I mentioned before, was partly inspired by du Maurier's Rebecca in approach. The difference is that the Rebecca character in my story is still alive, and he's physically separated from his younger brother. But! That's where all the gothic elements also get worked in.

The result is that the book takes longer than usual to sort itself out, and when my usual target chapter count for my long novellas is 26 chapters, the maximum I can give myself is 28. That said, at this rate, I might be looking at 30 chapters, which will bring the total word count to over 50K words. That also defeats my purpose of sticking to the long novella format, which is to sharpen my skills in telling a complete and relatively complex story in a shorter format (also, in terms of pricing, anything over 50K will be given a $2.99 price tag). 

But if the story refuses to stay within my strict parameters, I know I shouldn't fight it. Of course, the revision stage will tell me if reducing the length is possible, and I've hacked longer books down significantly to fit the publisher's length requirements (Icarus in Flight and Arabesque). I suppose, at the end of the day, it's easier for me to cut things out than to add material, so we'll see how things work out. 

At any rate, Valérian is still on track for a Nov. 1 release. 

Now for the side project...

I started working on something last year, and I ended up trunking it after 25K words because it wasn't going anywhere. In late May of this year, though, I decided to resurrect the idea and write a completely new version of it, and it's been a good process for me. In fact, the book's about 2/3 done. Unlike my usual releases, this one doesn't have a target length even if I'd love for it to be no longer than 50K words. If it goes beyond that, it's okay. This book is experimental for me.

And what I mean by that is it's not only a side project, but it's a story that's completely off the beaten track that I decided to tackle because I needed to take myself out of my comfort zone and attempt something I've been curious about but never tried before. 

Now whether or not the book will find an audience is another matter entirely, and I'm not worried about that. Since it's a side project, there's no guarantee that I'll write more books in the same vein. However, if I do, I'll have to work it in my main calendar, which will mean a wider spread of release dates for my Grotesqueries collection. What's now a three-book calendar will have to be a two-book one, and the side project will find its spot somewhere in there.

I'll also be publishing these books (or this current WIP if that's all I'll manage) under a new pen name because of just how far off the beaten track the genre is for me. I'll be posting about it when the time comes, though, so at least visitors to my site will know what's up, and it'll be up to them to decide if they really want to take a chance on that. 

Some trivia, by the way...

A House of Profane Gods was a title I initially gave what I'd first planned for the second book in this side project thing. But when I trunked the first unfinished draft of my WIP, I decided to give the title to my upcoming Grotesqueries book instead. So now I'll have to come up with a new title for that side project if things end up working to my satisfaction. 

So complicated, this writing business. 

August Arrives, Experimentation Ends

This marks the longest break I've had over here, but that had nothing to do with rest and relaxation. On the contrary! 

I put this site on private mode, redirected (hopefully) visitors to my Payhip site as my new home base, but that ended up as well as I'd expected, which was badly. That store, in its second incarnation (I had it up once a couple or so years ago and deleted it), sold nothing. No amount of marketing site-specific sales did anything other than attract bot traffic to it with zero conversions. And that store has been up since the start of the year.

I count that as my second strike, and I'm not going to attempt a third. I know when I'm beaten, and there's no help for it.

So I deleted that site and have sworn off direct sales at this point unless I somehow stumble across the secret to successfully attracting a massive audience of readers to my (extremely niche) books. For a writer who barely sells over at bigger, more established and popular online stores, selling direct is just not going to work. 

Also things have gotten even busier at the day job, believe it or not, and I just don't have any gas in the tank by the end of the day. I can't maintain a store and be creative in my marketing. I've tried just about every sale method and combination Payhip offers creators, and I still failed. So! No more direct sales. I just can't anymore. 

One final attempt at experimentation was setting up a really stripped down single-page site over at Carrd.co (a platform I highly recommend, by the way), but I found I do miss blogging, regardless of consistency. I mean, I'd love to be more consistent and post at least once a week over here, but that remains to be seen, doesn't it, with my day job being the way it is? 

(Not that I'm complaining about the day job, of course -- I'd rather be run off my feet than fruitlessly looking for a job in this economy)

At any rate, after a brief stint away from this dinosaur of a platform, I'm back, and I've once again updated all of the links all over this site and reverted back to my old Books2Read links. 

I did add a new moodboard to my main Book Gallery page, and it contains a mix of images highlighting the kinds of subjects I gravitate toward in my writing (i.e., ghosts, the occult, gay romance, liminal spaces, etc.). I'll also be updating around half of the moodboards in the individual gallery pages as well. 

In fact, I already have the moodboard I plan to use for Valérian's gallery page, but all good things to those who wait. Anyway, there it is. I do have a few writing updates to post this weekend, so stay tuned for that. 

Now Available: 'The Shadow Groom' (Plus Two Sales!)

It's out, it's out! Yay! Book number eleven in my Grotesqueries collection is finally here, and I can breathe easy.

All is well and perfect in the world because Errol Bricksworth and Edvin Loyola-Norikova are young (too young), in love (overly so), and betrothed at just nineteen (heaven help everyone). Their families aren't very keen on the idea, and with the help of Errol's beloved Uncle Sorrel, an arrangement is made meant to test the lads' resolve to have their happily-ever-after. 

It does require three months spent in an old, old gatehouse that's not only home to mismatched furnishings, art, and miscellaneous contents spanning centuries, but a few very active ghosts as well. Errol and Edvin are to be the gatehouse's caretakers while Uncle Sorrel, who owns the property, withdraws with his tiny staff to a cozy cottage tucked away in the wood. And for three months, both young men need to get their hands dirty, learn the rudiments of domestic life as a couple (learning how to cook helps), and get used to sharing space with lives long gone. 

Errol and Edvin's youth makes them brave and even reckless as they readily accept the terms, determined to prove those poxy adults wrong. Even those resident ghosts don't bother them, though not all hauntings, apparently, are made the same. Equal parts irritating and unnerving, the ghosts gradually force the lads to think beyond their tiny world of two either through spectral echoes of long-forgotten lives or the quiet guidance of a gentleman known only as "the shadow groom" to former staff. 

The Shadow Groom is a humorous re-imagining of the German folktale "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was".

For some fun stuff, here's the gallery page for the book, where I share some fun tidbits about the fairy tale that inspired me to work on a re-imagining of it. 

To celebrate the wide release, I'm holding a BOGO-like sale for the book over at my store. When you purchase a copy of The Shadow Groom, you can get any book from my backlist for 60% off, including my long novellas that are usually priced at 99 cents. Getting my books from my Payhip store is the most direct way readers can support my work. This sale, moreover, will continue until my next book is released in November.

Everywhere else, you can go to the book page at Books2Read for all the links to different online bookstores for both digital and print formats. The e-book is priced at 99 cents, and the print book is $9.00 USD. 

Again, thank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy the book! 

---

JULY SALE AT SMASHWORDS 

There's also another sale, but this time an exclusive one over at Smashwords. My entire Arcana Europa, Curiosities, Masks, and miscellaneous collections are 50% off with coupons throughout July. It's not a part of their sitewide sale, but something I specifically put together to coincide with it because I don't want all of my collections to be part of their summer sale. So if you have a Smashwords account, go here to my author page to see what's on offer.

Oh, Hello. There I Am.

I didn't realize I've only posted twice this month. Yikes. But then it's that time of the year when I step back and ease off the gas pedal -- at least where online activity's concerned. Or blogging, anyway. This month's been surprisingly productive off-screen, if you will, with Valérian coming along pretty well, and the notes (and growing number of images for the book's future gallery page) are giving me a lot of fuel for the story's forward momentum.

Oh, hey, it's Roland! (image from Pinterest)

The story's being told from one POV this time a la Doppelgänger, and it's just as dark as said book. With any luck, I'll be able to get all of the creepy stuff out of my system by the time Camera Obscura comes around because that book's supposed to be another comedy (a complete 180 turn from the original story idea).  

I have been pretty busy scouring around for image prompts, and as mentioned before, Pinterest has been a goldmine as far as what I'm hoping to tackle after Liminal Child (in addition to other books in my queue). 

But I've also run across a few sites that have several story prompts based on genre, and I'm hoping they'll still be around once I'm ready to get started on brainstorming and note-taking. I tend to go nuts whenever inspiration strikes, and before I know it, I've got half a dozen story ideas lined up with book covers already put together. Talk about optimism, right? But those book cover images actually light the fire under me, and if I hold on to them, they're always there to remind me about whatever plotbunnies are waiting their turn to be turned into full-blown books.

As of late, I realize I've been saving images of cemetery statues -- not of angels, but something like the ones I posted previously that have gotten me going with Valérian. 

One of a dozen-plus for A House of Profane Gods (image from Pinterest)

The difference, though, is that the images (there are two) that I set aside for Valérian are strictly a solo thing, i.e., the statues represent only one person in the story. But the newer obsession I have involve multiple figures in a variety of poses that run the gamut between sad, creepy, and grotesque. And I do have the germ of a story inspired by those images; however, we're looking at a publication date that's two years from now. Will that idea stick around that long? I've already committed to the next four books on my calendar. I haven't bothered to look beyond them. In fact, I made myself stop.

But, uh... cemetery statues. They need a story.

And there's also that Cupid and Psyche retelling that I want to tackle even though I haven't gotten around to coming up with how best to do that. Too many ideas, I'm telling you, and there's only one of me.  

Next Up: Valérian

So when I said "soon", I clearly meant "in a week, yo". 😶 Yeah, life happened, alas. 

Anyway, I've just started work on Valérian, which is enjoying copious notes-spawning in my notebook. I'm really looking forward to this story as it's been getting pretty expansive in my head, and I've also got some pretty effective musical and visual inspiration for it. 

This image, which I'll be using in the gallery page for the book down the line, has been lurking in my hard drive for a good long time, and it's finally making itself "heard". I know it's most likely AI-generated, but I couldn't find anything else just as fantastical and creepy as hell that's from real-life cemeteries, so I apologize for its usage (to be honest, a lot of the images I've used for my gallery pages were AI-generated, which seems to be the thing now over at Pinterest, my go-to place for visual prompts). 

Then there's this song, which pretty much encapsulates the subject of the book:

I talked about that song as well as "Daniel" in an older post, and as with the image above, they're finally getting the story treatment. When the time comes for the gallery page to be made, it's going to be an embarrassment of riches for me regarding the images that can be used for the moodboard and other things. 

Yay, progress! 

'The Shadow Groom' Gallery Page Now Up

As I'm up to my ears in errands and chores, this'll be a short and sweet post. The gallery page for The Shadow Groom is now up, and there's quite a bit of background stuff I'm sharing with visitors there. Head on yonder for the goodies. 

And I'll be back soon. Maybe not today, no, but soon.  

'The Shadow Groom' Blurb

Getting there! I just finished the first round of revisions and edits, and I'm about to dive right back in for the next round. In the meantime, I submitted the book to Draft2Digital to format, so I can download my proof copy and use it for that purpose (and to have it listed ahead of time for pre-orders).

And along with that comes the book blurb. I was aiming for 250 words maximum, but it ended up blasting past and landing at around 260. At least it's not 300, eh?

All is well and perfect in the world because Errol Bricksworth and Edvin Loyola-Norikova are young (too young), in love (overly so), and betrothed at just nineteen (heaven help everyone). Their families aren’t very keen on the idea, and with the help of Errol’s beloved Uncle Sorrel, an arrangement is made meant to test the lads’ resolve to have their happily-ever-after.

It does require three months spent in an old, old gatehouse that’s not only home to mismatched furnishings, art, and miscellaneous contents spanning centuries, but a few very active ghosts as well. Errol and Edvin are to be the gatehouse’s caretakers while Uncle Sorrel, who owns the property, withdraws with his tiny staff to a cozy cottage tucked away in the wood. And for three months, both young men need to get their hands dirty, learn the rudiments of domestic life as a couple (learning how to cook helps), and get used to sharing space with lives long gone.

Errol and Edvin’s youth makes them brave and even reckless as they readily accept the terms, determined to prove those poxy adults wrong. Even those resident ghosts don’t bother them, though not all hauntings, apparently, are made the same. Equal parts irritating and unnerving, the ghosts gradually force the lads to think beyond their tiny world of two either through spectral echoes of long-forgotten lives or the quiet guidance of a gentleman known only as “the shadow groom” to former staff. 

The Shadow Groom is a humorous re-imagining of the German folktale “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”.

As always, there might be some tweaking still for the blurb, but at least it's one significant step forward short of pressing "publish" on my author dashboard.  

Calendar Changes and Updated Cover Art

As I work my way through The Shadow Groom, I'm already sorting out my notes and my book queue. For a while, I had Camera Obscura slated for November 1, but looking through my journal, I'm amassing a hefty amount of (very pushy) notes for Valérian. There are a number of things still needing to sort out with Camera Obscura, and I'm not going to steamroll my way through those missing patches of plot points. Done it before, and it didn't turn out well (see: Eidolon).

To that end, I'm rearranging my publishing calendar and switching dates around. Camera Obscura will be released next year while Valérian will leap frog over A House of Profane Gods (which also has way more notes going for it than Camera Obscura, by the way, but not as many as Valérian) for the November slot. 

The book also enjoyed a bit of an upgrade in its cover art now that it's been shuffled forward to an earlier date (it may still be slightly tweaked, but the elements are staying):

It's certainly much more effective than the first cover art I shared. With all that said, here's the new calendar:

2026 calendar

2027 calendar

With any luck, my notes for Camera Obscura will grow along the way. If not, it'll be switching spots once more with A House of Profane Gods. I've already updated my Book News and Book List pages.

In other news, my new book prices are all set at different online stores EXCEPT for Amazon, which is taking its damn sweet time. If you purchase any of my Grotesqueries books there, you'll still be paying 99 cents until they finally post the new price. 

Been a Week

Hard at work in the revision + editing department for The Shadow Groom. At the same time, notes are already stacking up for the next three books in my queue (Camera Obscura, A House of Profane Gods, and Valérian). In the course of which, by the way, I stumbled across a possible plot bunny for a "Pygmalion" retelling. Seeing as how that one's born from a moment of complete dejection, I'm not sure if it'll happen, but if I were to step back and stay focused and objective, I know I can do it.

If it does happen, it'll be something like a dark fairy tale of sorts. The only sticking point is the very personal nature of its source, if you will. I do have these moments on occasion whenever something triggers a specific thought that never fails to leave me depressed, and up until now, no story idea has ever come out of them. 

I've been drowning myself in books, too -- not that I've ever stopped, but up until the last few months, all of my reading's been done via e-book app. Now I'm doing a mixed bag of print (borrowed library books) and e-book (owned or borrowed), which also includes my Bucket List Reading. So far I've managed to read The War of the Worlds some months ago, and the most recent one was Logan's Run. Sadly, I DNF'd Logan's Run as I couldn't get into it, but there are still so many books out there screaming for my attention. So many books, so little time, and no room for regrets. 

I have Don Quixote somewhere in my queue, but considering the book's heft and text size, I'm going to have to finish the current pile of checked out books first before rolling up my mental sleeves and diving in.

My story ideas notebook is almost filled up, so I'm about to get a fresh one. However, I'm also getting into personal journaling as well as commonplace journaling. What I hope to do is mesh all three in one new notebook as a way of pulling myself off the internet and off my apps for longer and longer stretches of time every day. 

I've seen a number of videos on commonplace notebooks and on journaling, and a few of them seem very performative to me and less about the point of the exercise, which is something a person does privately. Anyway, that's the only beef I have about some of the content I've run across (and still run across), and since I've already dipped my toes into the pool for those two (been keeping a story ideas journal for ages now, so I be an expert on that), I already know how best to approach all three as one unit, using only one notebook. 

Hoping that'll yield dividends in the long run as being online is taxing as all hell, and I'm not getting any younger. At least the story ideas notebook has been my best friend for years, so it's just a matter of stretching my personal writing efforts a little further. 

Exclusive Store Sale Now On (and On and On...)

Just a quick post to let everyone know my store-wide perma-sale is now live. Everything -- save for the two novellas in my Dolores collection -- is marked down for all eternity (rather dramatic-sounding, but that's how it is). 

My books, including new titles, are discounted in tiers. The older the collection, the steeper the price drop. It starts with all the Grotesqueries collection at 60% off, which includes Doppelgänger that came out a couple of months ago (so still a baby). And then it goes up incrementally from there: 60%, 65%, 70%, and 75%. 

I was planning to do a BOGO, but Payhip requires an end date for that kind of sale, so I might as well tackle everything in one fell swoop and leave it be. 

When The Shadow Groom comes out, it'll be part of the perma-sale if you purchase it directly from my store. And so on and so forth. And thank you, as always, for your support.

'The Shadow Groom': Done! (Plus a Few More Things About Ye Olde D2D Drama)

Yeah, firstly, The Shadow Groom is done! First draft is complete, and I left myself a lot of room for additional material meant to clarify a bunch of events in the story. This means the revision phase will be rather hardcore, but it's necessary. 

So in celebration, here's the obligatory happy dance video:

Actually, it's a perfect fit for the story, so I'm running with it. 😁 This book is on track (obvs) for the planned July 1 release, and when it's out, I'll be doing another BOGO sale over at my Payhip store to celebrate its publication.

And speaking of Payhip, I had to re-upload the files to the store because all links and end matter material (other than the "about the author" page) needed to be taken out as they all linked back to Draft2Digital. Books still distributed by them will have those pages and links, but not those I'm selling directly.

I'm still salty about raising my prices for the Grotesqueries books, but I'm also going to balance that out by doing perma-sales at my store. I was at first planning to offer monthly specials, but with my recent pivot, it'll be permanent -- as to what the sale would be, I'm looking at a number of options and still need to decide on which.

I do treat my writing and publishing as a business, which means earnings go back into the pot and pay for stuff I need to keep the machine going. Cover art image licenses, domain name, etc. -- those are supposed to be covered by my royalties, and if D2D will be taking an even bigger chunk off that, either I pay out of pocket with my day job earnings (all of which are already accounted for, budget-wise) or via credit card, which is my last resort if things go down that road. 

Do I regret sprouting roots in niche fiction? No. Never did, never will. But this is the way of things, and I gotta roll with the punches if I wish to stick around and see to the long tail of publishing my books.

Again, a final apology for the price bump for my Grotesqueries books and Ghosts and Tea sequels. If you do prefer to own my books as opposed to borrow them from library platforms or subscription services, keep an eye out for the perma-sale I'll be posting about soon.  

In the meantime, this is the final week for the 80% off sale for my Masks and Miscellanous collections. 

Wherefore Art Thou, Authors?

The thing about being in the thick of writing things is that there's really not much to talk about during that lull. I did pass the 30K-word mark, which usually also starts the paranoia phase of my drafting. I now only have less than 20K words to go to wrap things up, and let me tell you, things go REALLY quickly once that 30K-word line is crossed.

I'm on schedule, and this is going to be a bit of a challenge to revise and edit once the first draft's done.

The folktale I'm basing this on doesn't have a significant resolution, and unlike, say, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", which I based Compline on, "The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Is" is a weird -- albeit funny -- story because in the end, the main character (who's as dumb as a rock) STILL doesn't know how to shudder. Oh, his future wife makes him, of course, but it's got nothing to do with fear at all but, rather, cold water.

There's a lot of satire in the original folktale, though, but as to what, exactly, is being made fun of, I'm not really sure. There are only a number of interpretations from psychologists whose take I've never been a fan of. It's an old oral folktale that the Grimm brothers merely collected for their books, so whatever the point is for that story is lost forever, I think. 

The one thing I can say about the main character in the folktale, though, is that as stupid as he is (or one can argue he's just impossibly naive), he actually displays an impressive amount of compassion and empathy. Oh, he's got no understanding that the people he's trying to help are dead, but the need to help is there.

I am taking a lot of elements from the folktale and rewriting them in my own way to fit my version of it. So Errol and Edvin's ages needed to be bumped down a little more than usual, but I'm not marketing this as a YA book. They're both 19, which allows them to be utterly clueless about life and the world and believing the universe revolves around them still. We all know how it was to think we're indestructible. 

Anyway, that lack of a solid point in the original folktale has been difficult to keep out of my own story, and that'll make for a pretty intensive revision phase with maybe a lot of deletions and new material woven in. Or at least it'll take me longer than usual to get that done. 

In reference to this blog post title, I'm wondering about the "old guard" of writers who've been very active for years and then suddenly dropped off everyone's radar (or significantly cut down on their presence everywhere). It's very difficult, keeping writing and publishing up. It's not only hard actually turning words in your head into readable text following a plot that does everything it needs to do, but also go through the rest of the publishing stages of revising, editing, book cover design, marketing, etc. 

The sudden or gradual disappearance of the authors whose books I own and am happy to add to gives me a lot to think about. Things aren't forever, and life happens to everyone. For those authors with a massive following and who enjoy significantly more success than I, I reckon the added pressure of reader expectations can also burn them out eventually. 

I do miss them. I miss their stories and their voices and only now hope they're all doing well. A handful of go-to writers are still writing and publishing fairly consistently, but they're doing so at a markedly slower pace. I've been trawling Smashwords for new voices to discover now, and the proliferation of AI-written books is putting a damper on things. I did get sucked into maybe four books from "authors" I now actively avoid, but I've also discovered one relatively active writer I'll be following. 

I'm still keeping an eye out and hope to run across more of these new writers. Serendipity rules, man. 

April Store Sale

Life's rough, and sales are good. Apologies for forgetting to update both my Payhip store and this blog, but a late day is better than nothing.

So for all of April, my Masks collection as well as my Miscellaneous collection are 80% off. In essence, most of these books are cheaper than my Grotesqueries novellas, so yay!

This sale lasts through -- yep -- the end of April, and it's only happening at my store. So if you'd like to snag a copy or two of whatever books you might have been on the fence about, go to the following pages for them:

Masks (80% off the entire series including the omnibus)

Miscellaneous (80% off the entire series including all the omnibuses)

There'll be another sale (a different one) in May, and I'm trying to make these offers a monthly thing. Hopefully I'll be a hell of a lot more on top of things by the first of May, but I'm me, and life is life. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the books if you do purchase any, and thank you so much for your support! 

 

La Colline Aux Oiseaux

Hello, Sping. The Bay Area just ended Winter with a freaking heat wave, and I'm glad it's over and that we're set to enjoy milder spring weather in the coming days. Seeing as how it's still hot where I am, I'm unable to go to bed and have been diverting myself with stuff to feed my brain for my weekend writing.

You know, I actually debated adding this song to the gallery page for Doppelgänger, but I honestly didn't start listening to this until the tail end of that book's creation. I didn't listen to any song at all for inspiration, and it was solely by accident that I ran across this one again after a long spell of forgetting it existed. 

Maybe it's sentimental of me to use it, but as it does have a lullaby-like quality, I imagine this melody being hummed by Marguerite when putting little Théodore to bed. 

I've also listened to the English versions of the song, but I don't know how faithful of a translation they are to the original French (the title might come close enough with the English being "Mockin' Bird Hill"). 

At any rate, it's a melancholy touch if I were to apply it to the book and the LaSalle family's backstory. I'm not adding it to the gallery page, though, but posting about it here is good enough. In the meantime, I'm also not listening to any songs for The Shadow Groom although one of the book's original prompts (besides being inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale) was the Gothic album from Nox Arcana, which I listen to religiously alongside other albums from them. 

Hell, given the way my brain works, I might end up recycling ideas that Gothic gave rise to for a future book.