Under construction for the next few weeks!

 Sooner or later, this blog will change from pretty damned ugly to a beautiful swan, although it's been hard trying to find it again. Right now, I'm on kindle vella with the Lady Julia stories, but soon....well, it's hard to tell. 

Just deleted the post with free links to Arabella as I go back into my writing cave

Working hard on Flint and Lucy, and Jane (and that evil old dragon, Dain), and Margaret and Flint's best friend, Jaden. But need to pull back for a little while to work on real life stuff. Stay tuned!

Getting back the mojo! Woot!

So Deidra is live and I'm feeling better now that the changes are live (who'd ever thought I'd be happy to be #1 million in rank?) And I uploaded Flint's pre-order over at Draft2digital. Even better! I have an elevator pitch :)

Rich frat bro in a Games of Thrones/LOTR setting meets the geek girl of his dreams, but she's targeted for death, and he must pick sides to save her. Too bad one side is instant death, and the other is just plain crazy.

Lady Deidra is live! And I'm worried

It's come to my attention that I simply can't put a book out in 90 days--maybe a hundred days, but not ninety days. There's just too much going on in my life and it's just...I dunno. I hate to say I need money, but there's the day job, and the night job, and the freelance work.

I just finished Deidra and uploaded it, in a helluva rush, because I'd already delayed it once and Amazon doesn't give multiple extensions. Which means I have version one and two (bangs head against the desk). I'm totally doing everything wrong, and all I can think is--it's a long haul. Forgive yourself and hope the people who preordered the first book will find the second version. Now write #3. I just wish I could tell people whats happening.

A very interesting take on the use of backstory

If you want to know how to build your character or villain realistically, this is an excellent post on micro-aggression or how backstory is triggered.

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180406-the-tiny-ways-youre-offensive---and-you-dont-even-know-it

The Best Writing Advice Ever

I love this piece of advice because I've never really been into describing troop movements although I did that once when I was starting out and wrote a regency that almost jumped on the historical regency bandwagon. Looking back on it, it had major problems starting with weird set pieces, and ending with too much exposition. It also had me detailing the entire battle of Salamanca with one of the Greenhill military books in hand. Total lack of focus, lol.

But anyway, this is cool. Resonance is a great word for what is actually a series of connections we make as readers. e.g. If there is no child, but there is a pair of burnt up children's socks lying on the road, and a war going on, then there is a severely injured or dead child as a result of that war. I told my kid once that the problems with this writing tool, which is also known as subtext, is that some people just can't understand subtext. Ever left a comment on a news article and had to explain you were being sarcastic? Yeah, same thing, right down to having to post a definition of sarcasm with a wikipedia link.

But when it works? It works wonders.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

It's been two months and 10 days since putting Lady Arabella up for sale, and...I've come to the realization that I simply can't write 25k in two months and 10 days. It kind of sucks, but I'm working on it as fast as I can, and hope to have Deidra out in a week or two. In the meanwhile, I have this really great cover by the fabulous Tara over at Fantasia Frog, the world's most underrated cover artist.

She absolutely captures the faintly serious, and altogether fun sense of the Dwarven Gold series and I'm happy she's willing to work with me, lol. Although, now that I'm working my way through Deidra and Jerred's story, it's more serious and not as off-the-wall as the first book. Guess they're just more serious characters.