News, Updates, and Minor (Major) Ramblings

This post has gone through multiple iterations since I've come back from the GCLS conference back in July, and it's only because I'll think of something while typing, and I either get distracted or hold off on posting because my idea is a good one, thinking I would use the post to announce it because I'm always working on something. Usually that's not the case, but this time, I have a couple of things to announce lol. Uh...since this is going to be a recap of my summer pretty much I'll put this under a cut so it's not a freakishly long post. I hope you all had an enjoyable summer, and I hope the next few months are a complete nightmare. Onto the good stuff!

It has been a while. I know it seems like I've vanished off the face of the Earth, but like most USians, I had a hard time processing the election, and that coupled with my normal depression and some family things, made existence painful. Now with the coming of Spring, well, Summer at this point, and a move, I'm hoping I'll be able to get back into the writing and publishing game. Before I jump into what this post is truly about, I wanted to say I went to Queers and Quills over the Memorial Day weekend, and it was an interesting event to be at since the only writer events I've been to has been GCLS, which is about sapphic books and the authors that write them, who are primarily women identifying folx. So, going to an event where all of the queer community represented was interesting, but also a little refreshing. The queer community isn't a monolith, but sometimes we fall into the pit of putting ourselves in cliques, especially now and in the US. You can see it in t...

No blog post or newsletter in August. Or maybe there was a newsletter. Hang tight. There was one! So I'm not doing tremendously horrible. There won't be one in September. I'm actually contemplating on shutting down my newsletter, and starting a Discord server to distribute news, new releases, and the like. It's much easier for me to maintain that, and I don't have to come up with content. I'm shit at coming up with content. I'll probably make a final decision on that at the end of the year. Still chugging away at re-writes for Outside The Game. I lost all motivation to work on it or anything for that matter, but I'm going to get back into it this weekend, and try to get out of this fifth chapter and get into the sixth. A part of the lack of motivation is due to work. Going into the office 3 days a week and then staying until 5 or 6P and dealing with traffic is just exhausting. Miss the work from home days. With all this being said, will this book come o...

Hope we're all fattening up and getting ready for a long winter's nap. Ha! Wouldn't that be fantastic? Just be like a bear or a chipmunk and get fat over the course of fall then sleep my way through winter. Ugh. Such a good life. The closest thing humans get to hibernation is the food coma we fall into after a big meal. Speaking of big meals, Turkey Day is coming up for USians, so I'm excited to stuff my face and the 2 weeks I will be off during November. It's much needed. A couple of weeks ago, instead of editing the first book of my novella series, I read the second book in the Detective Miller series, which is titled Grisly Politics . I hadn't meant to do that, but I completely forgot how the story ended since it has been a year since I finished writing it. I opened it up, and I was cool with reading just the ending, but when I did that, I was like what happened here? So, I ended up reading the whole thing. I am really happy with how that story turned out. L...

August is almost over, and I had this post in my drafts since the beginning of the month and did not post it. Love how my brain operates. Just a quick check in this time around. I have paused on my Fate Unseen edits to do the edits on the first book of my new novella series IFL Tales. I definitely just made that up since I don't have an official name for the series. I currently have a name for the book, but I might need to change it because there are a number of books titled with same thing, and that's a sure way for my lil ole novella to end up buried even though it's not going wide for awhile. Anyway, I created a cover few weekends ago, and got a two thumbs up from one of my favorite people who I can trust not to bullshit me, which is exciting. I'm not sure if I've gone over what IFL Tales is about or what this first novella will be about, but I'll hold off on going into them because I want to be in my third round of edits before I do that. By that point, I k...

It's been 9 months since I've posted anything, and my goodness am I sorry. I've been in such a hole and have been trying so hard to dig myself out of it that I've completely let everything slip away from me. Which, in all honesty is a disservice to the people who are out there waiting for me to come out with something new or pick up on one of my series. While I know I have no obligation to put out stories and what not, it does make me feel shitty. At least from a reader's standpoint. As a writer, I know I can keep writing for myself because I've been doing that for decades now, but as a reader to get invested in an author and have them just vanish is a little upsetting. So, I want to apologize for the vanishing act and I will try to get better at it. Let's talk about a huge thing though. I didn't realize how many people followed my author pages on Goodreads, Amazon, and Smashwords. It's not a big number or anything, but there are a number of people f...

By productive I mean, I'm further along in the manuscript for the second Detective Miller book and I've been doing some work on my website. I hope May has been treating you all better than it has me. I got Covid the week before last—thanks to my sister's husband—so I've been in isolation for the last two weeks. It was a mild case and felt more like a head cold, but it left me super tired. Last Saturday, all I did was sleep and it was glorious.

 Wheeeee! It's the end of April, and I'm just getting around to posting a blog. I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to go back to it. This should be a quick since I don't have much to update on. I'm still whiling away on the second book in the Detective Miller series. I'm going to be real, I can never remember what I call this series.

Whew, child! It is mid-March and I feel like I have nothing to show for it, which is so far from the truth, but I'm sure some of y'all know how it is. It looks like we might get a quote, un-quote, "normal" spring and summer this year, but we shall see. I'm headed to my first con since September 2019. It's just for a day. I want to see how everything is being handled by the coordinator of these events. If me and my apprehension feel okay with it, I might be headed to Tampa for QFX in May. I hate how everything is contingent on what this virus is going to do, but I'm going to do everything to protect myself, and try to enjoy life as best as I can.

 I rang in the new year on my death bed. I contracted a sickness, maybe the flu, from my youngest nephew which had me incapacitated the first week of the month and at my sister's house a week longer than I wanted to be. He tested negative for Covid and my at home test came back negative, so I don't think it was Covid. Anyone else having a hell of time getting tested for the virus that's running amok in world? Seesh.

January came and went. It was pretty wild. The Capitol was bumrushed by terrorist. We got a new president that doesn't look like a bottle of Sunkist gone wrong, and some other things happened, but I cannot recall them. We had some losses too. Larry King, who I didn't know voiced the bar wench in Shrek (thanks for that Tumblr). Cloris Leachman who was always a delight onscreen, and lastly, but certainly not least, the iconic Cicely Tyson. Her most memorable role for me, at least recently, is when she was on How To Get Away With Murder , but that woman was an icon who had bigger and more memorable roles than that. I know I've been MIA for the last couple of months. I just didn't have it in me to do anything author related. Blogging, the newsletter, writing, editing....none of it appealed to me. Blame it on the holidays, or what, but I just wasn't feeling it, so my holiday break turned into something much longer. However, I did move into my own place at the end of Dec...

The heading of this post doesn't pertain to all of it, but I just realized something. I have my blog set up on the RSS feeds of my Amazon author and Goodreads pages. Why am I an idiot? Because I don't fcking post. All these people could be coming to the blog and all this jazz, but why come if I haven't posted since Obama was in office ( I miss him.). Any ways, I'm going to set up a schedule and blog more frequently.  If you haven't read my prior post , Fate Unseen, the second book in The Last Pureblood series has been put on hold. I need to reevaluate my approach with it, or I need to do something differently. I won't go into it, but in my last post, everything has been explained. I'm hoping when I go back to it with fresh eyes the problem will jump out at me and I can fix it. We shall see. In the meantime, I have been working on The Adventures of Swift, which is exclusively available on my Patreon page and Gumroad . I'm up to episode 11, and I'...

Oh, man, trying to write a blog post has been a challenging thing for me this month. Hopefully this round will stick. I hope we're all doing okay and keeping safe out there. I know some states are opening up, and I hope those of you that are affected by that are doing the best you can to keep yourselves and your inner circle healthy and minimize your exposure. I'm not going to say anything further because if I do, it's not going to be nice and next thing I know the NSA is coming to me saying, "We just wanna talk to you." In the last iteration of this post, I had no updates. That all changed on Monday. Fate Unseen was returned to me after being in my editor's very capable hands. Let's give a shout out to my editor who has worked tirelessly to get this back to me in a timely fashion despite everything going on personally and pandemically. She is a wonderful lady. Now the ball is back in my court. Normally when my editor sends a manuscript back to me, I...

The month has completely passed me by and I feel like September will do the same. Oh, boy. Thought I'd make a quick blog post before the month finishes out. Tomorrow, August 26th, Murderous Profession will be out on Kindle and Smashwords! I'm still working on the paperback formatting, but that should be out in a week or two. Between life and work, time just got away from me. Lame excuse, but it's surprising how busy I was in August. But anywhoo, grab yourself a copy of the book and tell me what you think about it. I found it to be a quick read and entertaining, as did my editor. Of all the characters, I have a fondness for Dax and Billy. I had a fun time writing them. I know some of you are waiting with bated breath for the next Avery Lawson book, and I am actively editing it as we speak, however, I'm taking the tortoise route with it--slowly but surely. I don't want to miss something that should have been mentioned in this one, or I mention something that shoul...

The store is back up on my website. A couple of call outs; if you're an EU based reader, sorry, but VAT gave me a headache and you can't purchase from the site. However, you can still order through Amazon and Smashwords , and when I start up the serials, you can purchase those through my Gumroad store. Any tangible items, like signed copies, are only shipped to US readers, and if you try to purchase a signed copy, Paypal will say, "Sorry, but this seller doesn't ship outside the US." This may change, but the landscape of selling things online is changing, so who knows. I have thoughts on it, but they have nothing to do with this. We have a cover for Murderous Profession, and it is below. For those who voted for Cover B, a winner has been chosen and has been contacted. If they want me to announce their win publicly I will, but they will remain anonymous. The winner is getting a signed copy of the book that will be printed by the new book printing company I'm ...

First and foremost happy February and happy black history month. May we all learn something this new. So, the reason for this post is because I'm changing things up. I originally wanted to release book two of the Pureblood Series the first half of the year, and my standalone book the second part of it. I've accepted that releasing three books in 2019 isn't going to happen, but I knew it was a lofty dream. Thechange in my releases is due to the second Avery Lawson book being more involved the further I get into it. When I started writing it I was using the"pantser" method, and it's gotten complicated. For those who don't know what the pantser method is, it is when you are flying by the seat of your pants while writing with little to no outline. In my case I know what points I want to include but the in-between bits are a little dicey, and it leads to me staring at a blank screen. I've got a decent amount of the story written, but I want to take som...

Sigh. Let's rap good people. It has been a craptacular January for me, but I think things are getting back on track, especially after that bout of the food poisoning. I'm waiting to receive my survey on it, would not recommend. Last Pureblood Book Two I honestly have been plugging away at it and there is a nice chunk of it done, but I'm finding myself at a point where I feel like the pacing is sluggish and there are some elements I am truly struggling with. I find myself growing frustrated with it, but at the same time I also haven't been able to give it the proper attention it needs. Between the holidays, work, and life in general it barely got my full attention. I'm getting a new work schedule, and life is becoming less intense, so hopefully I can focus on the story and give you all the proper book you deserve considering the first one. I think my lack of patience is the cause of my frustration because book two is like the second part of laying the foundati...

It has been awhile since I have done a blog post. Yikes! Between Reappearance of Summer and work I'm surprised I remember my name. I hope all those participating in NaNoWriMo are having productive and fun writing sessions, and I can't wait for the new books to come out. As for me, my writing life is dedicated to the next book in the Last Pureblood series, but before I get into that let's talk about my partially released book, Reappearance of Summer . This book has taught me two things. One, I'm not doing pre-orders again. It just doesn't work out for a writer with a full-time job. You need to have more than four hours a day to be able to meet the deadlines. Second thing I learned is that I need to keep records of my ISBNs stored in several different locations. The one company in the US that sells ISBNs had a security breach and I couldn't access my ISBNs on the management site. I have them now and things with the physical copies of the book are moving along....

I feel like it has been sometime since a blog post, but I haven't been doing anything except working. Kidding, I have been doing book and author things. A newsletter wasn't one of those things because I completely forgot, but October will have a newsletter. Reappearance of Summer is still with the editor and I should have it back by the end of this week. Once I do my review I think I'll be two steps closer to being ready for the book's release at the end of October. If you haven't done so already you can pre-order the ebook on Amazon , my Gumroad store, and Barnes and Noble . Signed copies can also be pre-ordered through the Gumroad store. I'm only ordering enough to fill the pre-orders I recieve so if you want a signed paperback of Reappearance of Summer do it now because pre-orders end on October 15th. For the last year or so I've been trying to figure out what to do with my serialized short stories. I was going to do Patreon, but honestly I couldn...

Good day one and all! I'm still recovering from Dragon Con and the rest of the work week, so bear with me. This was supposed to be a vlog, but then I realized I talk too damn much and have zero video editing skills. Also my face is ugly, but this is neither here nor there. Onto the purpose of this post. Reappearance of Summer I am aiming for October 29th for a release date, but it is a tentative one. Depends on what the editing process has for me. Pre-sales will start September 10th and end on October 15th. This will only be on Smashwords and Gumroad. I feel like a month and some change gives me enough time to order books, sign them, and ship them out to their new homes. If it looks like an October 29th release date isn't possible, I'll let everyone know, but fingers crossed for the 29th of October. Amazon faithful, I mentioned in my last post why I wouldn't be doing pre-sales on there. You all will have to wait for the book to be released. Trust me, the pre-sale...