Friday News and Updates

Happy Friday!

Usually I save my update posts for Wednesdays, but I found myself with a free moment and decided a blog post was long overdue! Read on for updates regarding the availability of e-books in the Reborn series as well as current WIPs.

Availability:

A few months ago, I took down Reclaim (Reborn book #3) and Revenge (a novella) from Smashwords so that I could make them exclusive to Kindle for a period of time and take advantage of Amazon’s deal options (which are only available for exclusive books). And, although I do like the Amazon Kindle platform for a lot of things (I mean, I do make most of my sales there), this was a somewhat failed experiment, lol. It happens. I have basically come to the conclusion that Kindle Unlimited is useless (at least for authors, and maybe specifically indie authors).

But the good news is, this means I’m taking these books out of KDP Select once the enrollment periods end and making them available for Nook, Apple, and the other e-book platforms once again! The enrollment period is up for Reclaim on December 10, and on December 16 for Revenge. After the terms end, I’ll publish them again through Smashwords. There will be some lag time as they get approved for Premium Status and then transferred to all of Smashwords’ affiliates, but I’m guessing by the end of December they will be available on all of those platforms. I’ll post links to the home page as they go live.

Current Project/NaNoWriMo

Some of you might know this from following me on Twitter, but I did National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo) this year! Woooo! Lol. I didn’t “win” (the goal is to write 50,000 words in November), but I did come pretty close. Writing a little over 40K is still pretty good, if you ask me. 😉 Sure, it’s probably 40K crap that I will tear apart later as I’m editing, but sometimes you just gotta get words down on a page. Otherwise you will never get anywhere.

My NaNoWriMo project was sort of unexpected. I didn’t think I’d get as deep into it as I did, which is a good thing! Honestly, it started out as some Reborn series backstory. Then, I started thinking I could maybe get a companion novella out of it. Now it’s turning into a monster, ha. Even if I had reached the 50K mark it still wouldn’t be done, so it’s definitely a work-in-progress. I had to put it aside for a little bit because I had deadlines for other things that cropped up, but my goal is to try to finish the first draft before the new year.

So, yes, it’s another book that takes place in the Reborn world…as in, the same “rules” of magic apply as in the other books of the series, but it’s about a different set of characters (one of them does make a guest appearance in Revenge and Reclaim).

The idea began to germinate when I was reading up on Hades and Persephone. I loosely knew their origin story, but needed a refresher. And, just like the Greek myths that inspired the other Reborn books (and namely, Eros and Psyche), I was left thinking about how creepy it was. Of course, I try to put it in context…our modern perspectives on some of the themes in these ancient stories is quite different and still constantly evolving. Still, the story of Hades’ abduction of Persephone is pretty creepy, to say the least.

Just like with Psyche and Eros, I wanted to put a modern twist on it. I wanted it to take place considerably before the events of Reborn, so it starts out at a Halloween party in the year 1999. (I also started writing it right after Halloween so…yeah.) Persephone is a “daughter” of the ’90s so to speak, so when she encounters Hades she doesn’t put up with any of his b.s. Also, since she is from a more modern time period, there’s a weird time travel element to it that hopefully won’t be too confusing. But, to quote the good Doctor, time is just a big ball of wibbly wobbly, time-y wimey stuff, anyway. 😉

So in essence it’s a sort of time traveling, Greek myth meets Beauty and the Beast dark romantic fantasy novel. (That’s a genre, right?)

It has a working title that I don’t feel like sharing yet because this project could still go nowhere. I could end up deciding it’s still just good backstory–good for me to know the events in it happened, but not necessary for readers. As writers, a lot of stuff we write doesn’t, and shouldn’t, see the light of day. But for now I’m excited about it, and it seems to have potential…

To conclude, here is a playlist of random songs I’ve been listening to while writing it (don’t even ask me how T. Swiftie made it onto this playlist, even I don’t know the answer to that…). YouTube links are included.

Playlist:

The Killing Moon – Echo and the Bunnymen

Miss Murder – AFI

White Mustang – Lana del Rey

Dancin’ in Circles – Lady Gaga

Cherry – Lana del Rey

Every You, Every Me – Placebo

Muddy Waters – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Green Light – Lorde

…Ready For It? – Taylor Swift