It’s time for a bit of a craft update since it’s been about a month with­out a vam­pire post and you all are prob­a­bly won­der­ing if I’m even writ­ing any­more XD (Don’t wor­ry, I’m writ­ing!)

First: my next London Kemaker short sto­ry has just wrapped up. I wrote 4k in a big marathon push today, got to add The End to the man­u­script, and I’ll dive back into it on Friday for edit­ing and for­mat­ting.

The book is titled The Dragon Heir’s Secret Wedding, it’s a direct sequel to The Dragon Heir’s Omega, and brings the characters/plot to a con­clu­sion. But nev­er fear! The Knight fam­i­ly will show up in Dragon Assassin’s Omega and prob­a­bly future books in the same world, since they’re an influ­en­tial clan.

You’ll prob­a­bly see a down­load of the book ear­ly next week. I haven’t for­mat­ted in a lit­tle while so I need to remem­ber how that works XD Lots of push­ing but­tons and try­ing to undo my mis­takes.

Second and mov­ing for­ward, I’ve been talk­ing shop with oth­er writer friends/mentors and it’s become clear to me that despite a year of focus­ing on books and sto­ries that are sup­posed to earn mon­ey, I’ve not only pub­lished less, I’ve also enjoyed the work less, and my stress lev­el has been much high­er.

Writing for me has always been a fight between what I love and what is com­mer­cial­ly sal­able. Pulp fiction–the kind of com­mer­cial nov­els you see at the top of the romance chart on amazon–are sim­ply not the kind of sto­ry I like to write. In addi­tion, com­mer­cial work tends to fall off a sales cliff after 30 days and, despite my attempts, I sim­ply can­not pub­lish a book every 30 days. Not even close.

I have sev­er­al cowork­ers who can, and more pow­er to them, but their busi­ness mod­el is not mine and it’s time I stop try­ing to mim­ic a mod­el that isn’t work­ing for me.

Third: now that this lat­est Kemaker short is done, I’m going to shift focus into some real­ly fun stuff that I left behind.

Act of Piracy 3: This Ship of War is at the top of my list. I have a cov­er and half an out­line ready to go, which makes it the project clos­est to com­ple­tion already.

The Dragon Assassin’s Omega is next. Again cov­er is already owned, I just need to fig­ure out how I want to end the book so I can put the last half of my out­line togeth­er. This book, while intend­ed for a com­mer­cial audi­ence, has already become some­thing less com­mer­cial and more my style of para­nor­mal action/adventure. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Ashes to Ashes is NOT going away, but it does need a lit­tle more of a plan, so I’m going to set it aside to brain­storm where I want the sto­ry to go. Initially I want­ed this to be a chose-your-own-adven­ture sto­ry, but due to a lack of inter­est in vot­ing, I’m going to con­vert it to a planned nov­el. It’ll still be a vicious, tor­ture-porn, kink-fest, though, so stay tuned.

And per­haps the most antic­i­pat­ed: Sungrazer (Queenships 2). I’m going to start work­ing on the sequel to Perihelion and you’ve heard it here first. I know now that this sto­ry is a group of 4 nov­els, their titles are Perihelion, Sungrazer, Insolation, and Final Orbit. I’m also look­ing to explore some short­er sto­ries in the same uni­verse!

Finally, one major change is going to hap­pen here that I think all of you will enjoy. Rather than work­ing on a main project and giv­ing mem­bers occa­sion­al addi­tion­al short sto­ries, I’m going to start giv­ing you my new words every week as they are writ­ten. Since I write about 4k+/week on my main project, that means about 2 chap­ters each week, pub­lished on Friday, for your enjoy­ment.

Still want ebooks? No wor­ries! All mem­bers will still be receiv­ing my fresh­ly-for­mat­ted books for free in all for­mats as soon as they’re avail­able.

I hope this re-direc­tion to art that I LOVE is going to re-ignite my love for words. They’ve been feel­ing more like a chore recent­ly and that’s tough to work through. I also hope this new change in post­ing sched­ule will engage all mem­bers more reg­u­lar­ly! Special scenes and sto­ries will still be post­ed for 5$ mem­bers in between my nor­mal work.

I <3 you all!