Hell’s Hunters Mystery Box Giveaway!!

Do you like prizes? Signed paperbacks? Swag? Well, then, do I have good news for you!

Now to February 9, 2021, I’m hosting a giveaway through Rafflecopter for a “Mystery Box” of goodies, just for following me on a few social media links! The giveaway is totally free, and the best part is you get a free signed copy of Hell’s Hunters if you win!

I’ve been working in secret on some fun swag and prizes for months now in preparation for this giveaway, and I can’t wait to get it all together for one lucky winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Just click on the link above and get to following. ๐Ÿ™‚

I’m super excited for this release, and I can’t wait for y’all to see what Cherry and the Hunter brothers are up to! It’s been a blast going back to the world of Nowhere, North Carolina, where the ley lines are plentiful and the doorway to Hell is just down the road a piece. ๐Ÿ˜‰ Here’s the blurbage:

Cherry Hunter thought life as a newly-changed wolf shifter with five hot shifter brothers as her mates was complicated enough. Little did she know what would be in store for her when the tall, dark-skinned stranger entered the bar where she worked.

Now, with a demon Princeโ€™s pleas ringing in her ears, she has to convince her mates to take up the cause and help stop a literal Hell on Earth from coming.

The Hunters thought they were the biggest predators in Nowhere, but theyโ€™re about to find out that there are bigger, more dangerous monsters lurking in the tiny nexus town.

This paranormal reverse harem novel is intended for mature audiences.

As a bonus, I’m making the precursor to the Hell on Earth trilogy, Dealing with Demons, FREE on Kindle from February 9 through the 13th! That’s right, you can download the book prior to Hell on Earth for FREE February 9 through the 13th–even if you don’t have a Kindle Unlimited subscription!

So let’s see…. Free Kindle copy of Dealing with Demons, and a giveaway that includes a free paperback of Hell’s Hunters? Yes, please!

I’m still hard at work on book 2 in the Hell on Earth trilogy, which will be out March 16! More to come on that book as time gets closer to release. ๐Ÿ™‚

Obstinate Characters, Fickle Muse

It’s funny, but also true. Sometimes, the characters take on minds of their own, and they want what they want regardless of the mood you’re in.

The problem is, I can’t write when I’m not jiving with the same mood as the characters. Right now, I’m sure my main character’s harem is knee deep in blue balls as I struggle to figure out what they’re going to do next. LOL

I’m sure I’ll beat my way past this block and get the scene written, but it’s frustrating when the characters insist on doing something you’re not in the mood to write. I mean, they couldn’t just … talk? Y’know, discuss the plot and move it that way. Except this is where the story’s going, and it’s where I have to follow.

I’ve learned a long time ago that beating my characters into submission does nothing for the narrative. If they say a certain type of scene is needed, they generally know what they’re talking about. I mean, they’re the ones “living” it, right? So if anyone’s going to know what’s what, it’ll be them.

I just wish they’d clue me in ahead of time.

While I’ll be glad to be out of this dreaded quarantine, I’ll miss my writing time. It’s back to the early mornings before work for me soon, and that means my progress will slow considerably. I’ve tried to adjust my goals and deadlines accordingly, but it’s still a matter of “Can I do this once I go back to work?”

Won’t be a choice, though. It’s gonna be write or die, as it were, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lie down and quit without a fight. I’ll get this done–you bet your ass I wll–but it might take me longer than I had hoped.

At least I’m ahead. I had been aiming to have Hell’s Hunters to my editor two days ago, but it’s already formatted and uploaded for the preorder. Yep, I’m a full two weeks plus ahead of schedule, and that means the second Hell on Earth book, Hell’s Rejects, is well ahead of schedule too. I mean, I had been hoping to start it around this time, but I’m already almost halfway through. If today goes well–and my characters start to behave–I might end up halfway before the day is out.

Time will tell. Right now, time’s telling me I’d better get my ass moving if I’m going to get this shit done.

Let’s see if my characters behave better now that I’ve given them some cool-down time.

Positively Quarantined

Yep. It got me. The ‘Rona.

Last week, I was diagnosed with good ol’ COVID-19, right at the tail end of my quarantine period. I thought I would be in the clear, but just two days shy of being released from quarantine I developed sinus congestion, full body aches, severe fatigue, and a cough.

The cough didn’t last long, and thankfully neither did the body aches, but the sinus ick and fatigue are hanging in there, and I had a brief bout of weird but interesting sudden loss of taste and smell. Otherwise, I’ve felt almost normal. It’s odd, having this virus that’s caused so much worldwide panic and destruction but feeling so…me. I know I should be counting my blessings that, as an immunocompromised patient, I am doing as well as I am, and while I count my blessings, I also lament that I was just days away from getting the vaccine, thus weeks away from being more resistant to this whole mess.

Is this the way I wanted to get more writing time? NO! I would ideally have been back at work by now, but nooooooo, I had to contract the virus and end up stuck at home for even longer. Ugh! Talk about a mixed blessing. Now I have, let’s see, eleven more days of essentially uninterrupted writing. Wish that correlated to paid days of writing, but nope. Not for me.

Since I’m well ahead on the Hell on Earth trilogy, I’m trying to look on the bright side. I might–might–even finish Book 2, Hell’s Rejects, before I go back to work. If I can pull that miracle off, it’ll give me nearly three months to write Book 3. Weird how life works.

The only problem with this quarantine/virus is I don’t have the energy to push the marketing aspect like I should. Every time I even think about contacting Facebook groups or other outlets for some screen time, I just can’t summon the energy to do it. I just stare at the laptop, get disgusted with my lack of motivation, and dive back into my WIP to hide. If I could just push past that, I’d probably sell more copies!

Part of my hesitation stems from not knowing where I’ll be, work-wise, when the first Hell on Earth book releases. Will I be back full time? Probably, but if so, what will my schedule be? It’s not like I can check the computer at work, because, y’know, quarantine. Hell, they probably don’t know what my schedule will be. After all, I have to test negative before I can come back. And while I feel fine-ish now, who knows how I’ll feel in a week and a half?

Oh, well. Better to be thankful for what I can do and forget the things I can’t. Onwards and upwards with the WIP, and I’ll see how I feel the next couple of weeks!

Party crashers and other fun

It’s day four of the new year, and I’m on a roll!

That’s right, Hell’s Hunters is going to be that hot. ๐Ÿ˜‰ I finished the draft two weeks ahead of schedule, which means I got Hell’s Rejects started early. I’m excited to be ahead, but I know it’s only because I’ve been on quarantine. (Don’t worry, I was exposed but do not have COVID.)

I’m about 8500 words in on Hell’s Rejects, and so far it’s going great. I’ve got a good pace going, and even with distractions like Facebook and such, I think I might get a good head start before I go back to work Wednesday. I’m really enjoying the story, though part of it is turning in a direction I hadn’t expected. But hey, no one’s died–yet. *cue maniacal laughter*

Quarantine has been … strange. I can’t sleep in the same room as my husband, can’t get within six feet of him in our own home, and the cats didn’t know what to think at first. Now, though, they’ve adjusted to us being in different rooms, so they’re in for a rude awakening when I move all my stuff back to where it belongs and close the door on the guest room again. Bye-bye, half-of-the-bed-for-each-cat. Now they have to squeeze in by our feet again. LOL

I don’t know if it’s psychosomatic, but because of the quarantine and my subsequent cancellation of my infusion appointment tomorrow, my joints are extra angry this morning. I think they know I should be getting my med soon, but alas, won’t be for a little while yet. Probably another week, if they have an opening, or maybe more–I won’t know until the office opens and I can get ahold of someone.

Taking a brief writing break to get my newsletter together and do some other stuff, then I’ll dive back in.

Here’s to the new year, and here’s hoping I manage to keep on schedule!

2021 on the Horizon

It’s that time! Year-in-review / plans for the upcoming year post. ๐Ÿ˜‰

My 2020 ups:

  • I started the year with hope. Writing was going well, things were looking up, etc.
  • Hit the USAT bestseller list with one of my novellas in an anthology!!
  • Wrote and published three more novellas and three new novels
  • Started another trilogy, with plans for releasing early next year
  • Began implementing a plan of attack for writing projects to help me keep organized

My 2020 downs:

  • … You know what? I’m not gonna list ’em. Why bother? They’re not what I should focus on.

My plans for 2021:

  • Finish writing, editing, and publishing my Hell on Earth trilogy
  • Finish writing at least one Abnormalverse novel, and hopefully help my publisher with the release of the second Abnormal book (they’re trying, I’m told, but the pandemic has ground their gears to a shuddering halt)
  • Write the half-dozen novellas I have planned for box sets, including an Abnormalverse prequel novella as well as a prequel novella set in the Nowhere, North Carolina universe and another with the potential to become the first in a series
  • Improve my marketing practices for my books
  • And whatever else comes my way

I know what you’re thinking: These are all writing-related goals and notes here. What about the other aspects of your life?

Here’s the thing: I’ve been having trouble separating the aspects of my life that exist outside of writing, and I think my first step in achieving that separation is to stop melding them all into one blog of verbal vomit that I unleash when I can’t seem to sort myself out. I need to make this blog more positive, or at least focus more on one thing (writing) as opposed to spewing whatever thoughts come to mind.

What does that mean for this blog? It may end up being more quiet than before, like it has been the past several months. I may make more of an effort to give writing-related updates, though, so it may become more active–who knows? I’m kind of doing a cleansing of sorts, a restart, so even I don’t have full knowledge of how this is going to work.

It’s going to be a year of change, but I hope for the good. I hope that my stats on Amazon will continue to rise, that my books will sell, my fanbase will grow, and I’ll be able to take what I learn from other, more successful authors and apply it to what I do.

Here’s to another year older, wiser, and happier!

Christmas in Quarantine

It’s Christmas day, and in all my 41 Christmases this will be the first where it’s just me and my husband the entire day. Oh, sure, Mom, Dad, and my siblings will come up to the back porch to get their presents, and they’ll bring some dinner by for us to eat, but no coming inside.

Not until our COVID tests come back, that is.

Yep. Hubs wasn’t feeling well, so he got tested. I got tested because I had some sinus congestion (turns out I have a sinus infection that I thought was just allergies). We have a day or two on his test results, two to four on mine. Fun.

I hope we’re both negative, of course, and I hope we get our results in time for me to go back to work Tuesday. Until then, however, it’s homeward bound for me.

I’ve slowly been playing catch-up on Hell’s Hunters, but it’s not going as smoothly as I’d hoped. Still, this weekend I should be able to get more written and whittle away at that word count goal of mine. My hope is that I finish the manuscript and the initial revision/edits by the middle of January.

At least I have the internet to communicate with those I can’t see in person. It sucks that I can’t leave the house to visit anyone, but them’s the breaks during a pandemic, I guess.

I hope everyone who reads this is doing well, and I hope your Christmas is a normalized as possible during this time.

Mental Blocks and Ticking Clocks

Is is time for my neuropsych eval yet? ‘Cause I’m kinda floundering here, and nothing much seems to be helping.

Yeah, I have a pending neuropsychology evaluation in a month and a half. A month and a half of wonder what, if anything, is truly wrong with me, or if I’m just a spacehead.

I’m not looking forward to the almost-inevitable change or increase in meds. I mean, if I’m having true “memory problems” and not just spacing from some benign, innocent reason, that’s disturbing. Don’t really want to find out I’ve got some serious neurological deficits going on here.

At the same time, I almost do want it to be something serious. A reason for why I can’t remember basic things, or why I can’t focus on tasks that I need to do. Slap a diagnosis on it, tell me what to do to treat it, and get on with life. Right? Or maybe it won’t be that simple. Maybe even with a codable ICD-10 diagnosis I’ll still be a flake.

One thing that won’t be “fixed” by the eval: my current writer’s block frustrations. I have deadlines, and a whole book due to upload February 5th. Seems like plenty of time, but that’s not taking into account time to finish, send off to the editor, receive the edits, and fix the problems the editor finds. That needs to be done before the upload, so my actual deadline is a few weeks prior to the upload deadline. Fun.

Then, of course, while the book’s at the editor, I’ve gotta get cracking on the sequel, which is due for upload March 12th. Yeah, I set myself up for this. I wanted to play around with Kindle Direct Publishing’s new series feature, so of course I set the release dates for my Hell on Earth trilogy back-to-back. I didn’t leave myself much wiggle room for getting stuck, so I’ve gotta break out of this funk fast, or I’ll be screwed. I’m 33% into what I’m planning on being a 70k word book, with two more to write right after. Yeah. Fuck.

Because of my troubles with memory and focus lately, I’ve backed out of several anthologies I had previously signed up for, which is a bummer. I wanted to get those stories written, but for now I’ll have to pick and choose which ones I sit down and write and which ones I shelve for possible later consideration. I just can’t churn out at the rate I’d been hoping for, and it would be career suicide to even try at this point.

That’s right, I said “career.” I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the medical field. I don’t even necessarily want to spend the rest of my life in a “day job.” I want to write, to use an app on my phone to log my hours and set a writing schedule and be productive and successful. I’m a long, long, long, long way off from that, though, mental blocks or no, so I guess it’s a nonissue right now. I’m stuck where I’m at, and I can’t get out any time soon.

Not that I’m necessarily treated badly at the day job. For the most part, my coworkers are great, and I know I’m valued. Still, it’s not what I want to do for a living.

I have to quit sucking at marketing my books and bust past these blocks if I’m gonna achieve what I want before retirement, though. I might just have to end up writing in spurts, here and there, until I hit the golden 65 (or, more realistically, whatever age my body just fucking gives up) and can pull from my 401K while I dream up new worlds.

That reality there scares me. The inevitable slow decay of my sanity as I toil away in a dull, uncreative job that doesn’t allow me the time and dedication to give to my writing that I so desperately want to give it. I have to survive, I have a husband and a home and a car and bills that have to be paid, and none of that will be funded by my writing as it currently stands. I have to get better at it, or I have to leave it as a pipe dream, a bucket list item to pursue when a day job no longer is feasible.

The truly sad thing about all this? I’ve almost lost my ability to cry about it. I’ve just grown so numb to my situation that I just can’t even have a good cry, not even when I’m feeling my lowest. It almost seems like I can only cry when directly confronted with my failures as a human being by someone else. Me? I know myself. I know I’ve failed time and time again. Confronting myself doesn’t evoke anything other than disgust. No tears. Bone dry.

I’m trying to look up. To see hope in the future. I mean, I’ve got plans for creating my own swag/merchandise. I’ve got plans for this current trilogy, plus a few novellas in the same universe, plus another series down the line, plus the Abnormalverse is still very much a thing, even if it’s kind of set to the side while production on Book 2 is still halted. Lots of pluses, but my brain sees only negatives.

Time alone with my thoughts just makes it worse. When I can’t focus to write, I end up falling down a rabbit hole of introspection, which is a dangerous thing. Thinking can lead to feeling, which can lead to any number of tragedies. Depends on what the feels are, and sadly, I can’t predict what they will be.

It’s times like these–times when my mental health wavers–that I remember my great-grandfather. I’ve seen his death certificate. “Exhaustion in the progression of psychosis.” In that era, he could’ve had any of a number of mental illnesses, including the same bipolar disorder that plagues me. Is that all that’s wrong? Am I just bipolar, or is there something else lurking beneath? Will the bipolar disorder lead to an exhausting psychosis, or will it just swing back up to “semi-normal” for a while, teetering on the edge of insanity?

Maybe in a month and a half I’ll find out.

Maybe.

If I last that long.

Are you ready for Hell on Earth?

Hell on Earth has officially begun! Well, in my head at least. In my head, and on my computer.

I started Hell’s Hunters less than a week ago, and I’m already over 10,000 words in. I’m hitting a good stride, and I love the flow so far. I even went so far as to set the trilogy up for preorder a little early! (Books 1 and 3 are available for preorder, but there’s some technical difficult with Book 2 being stuck in a certain part of the process, so I have to wait to hear back from customer support on how to fix that.)

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me if I’m to make the preorder dates I put in, but I’m confident that I can do it. I just have to focus. Focus, and fix Book 2’s technical issue.

It’s exciting to “see” the established characters from the Bargains Struck trilogy through each others’ eyes. Cherry, an only child, is baffled by Elena and Callie’s sisterly dynamic, though they’re just acting the same as they did in Dealing with Demons. I kinda love experiencing my own characters through the other characters’ perspectives.

It would help if I’d stop getting distracted. LOL I just fugued out for a minute and was playing with graphics instead of, y’know, working on the story. I’ve never been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, but sometimes I wonder. LOL

I’m excited to bring my readers back to Nowhere, North Carolina, for this apocalyptic event!

Ravenous

I’d like to say I’ve just been hungry.

I’d like to say I can stop any time I want.

But who am I kidding?

I eat because I’m home alone.

I eat because I’m bored.

I eat because I’m frustrated.

I eat because I’m depressed.

I eat because I don’t know what the fuck I want to eat.

I eat for every reason except hunger.

I’m not hungry.

I’m actually quite over full.

I still eat.

I can’t even claim that I’m trying to stick to keto anymore,

Because my low-carb quantities are not so low.

I ate a whole carton of low-carb ice cream in under a day.

Because I wanted something sweet.

Because I wanted something cold when I was hot.

Because I wanted something.

I don’t know what my soul is ravenous for.

I don’t know what will fill it.

Not cheese.

Or eggs.

Or coffee.

Or pickles.

Or peanut butter.

Nothing.

No food can fill this void.

But what can?

Maybe if I find the answer,

I’ll be able to stop.

But until then,

I guess I’ll just keep eating.

Switching Gears

For the past six months or so, it’s been a slew of romances for me, writing-wise. I have churned out three novellas and three novels, all romance…and now that I’m back to the Abnormalverse, I’m finding it hard to get back in the dystopian/sci-fi frame of mind.

Example one: I almost wrote a detailed sex scene in the first chapter. Okay for a romance sequel, sure, but for characters in the middle of a dystopian war? Yeah, no. Had to go back and rework that chapter, plus add in at least one more, before I can let sexy fun times happen.

Example two: I’m skipping over important details and such when it comes to the war, which is not good. Yes, it’s good to have character development, but I also need to set the scene for why the characters in question need to develop.

I’ll get back into it. I’ll get back my voice. I just have to focus.

Problem is, sneaky depression and anxiety are creeping up and choking me at the moment. They come hot on the heels of my manic completion of Dealing with Demons, and they suck. I can’t seem to motivate myself to really buckle down on this new WIP.

Remember the cool barometer my word count tracker made for DWD? Well, check out this WIP’s tracker:

Yeah, I had a couple okay days once I finally got started, but…..yep. See that flatline there? Or the spattering of days where I got less than 400 words in? Yeah. That’s the depression and anxiety.

I’m hoping the work-related anxiety eases up a bit after next week. I’m still “in charge” for six more weekdays–well, five, I guess, since I have an off day next week–then the real clinic manager is back from maternity leave. I. Cannot. WAIT. I’m so exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I’m just fucking drained.

Life-related anxiety probably won’t settle down for a couple of weeks still, too. I have some diagnostic testing to get done next week. Probably nothing major, but there’s that nagging “What if” part in the back of my brain that won’t shut the fuck up. Seriously, brain. Stop.

The good thing in all this is I have some great accountability partners, and hopefully this weekend we can do some international Zooming and get some progress on our collective works-in-progress. We’re all stuck to some degree, and we hope that by encouraging each other we can get unstuck. Or something. Anyway, it’s good comraderie. (My computer is telling me I misspelled that word. I don’t care if I did.)

Clare, Eli, and Harper had better get their acts together soon. I have words to write and stories to tell.