Life is what hap­pens when you’re busy mak­ing oth­er plans.

That’s how the quote goes, right? I feel like life has been Nonstop for the past sev­er­al months since the fires, the rain, the mud­slides, the total insan­i­ty of cleanup. There are local streets being repaved, peo­ple are try­ing to rebuild, oth­er peo­ple are mov­ing, still oth­ers are orga­niz­ing sup­port.

And look­ing back on the past year maybe it’s been non­stop for a while now! Maybe GOGOGOGO is the new nor­mal for my life, which requires some hard deci­sions about where I spend my time.

Which is why you’re final­ly get­ting this mas­sive update. Because I real­ized I’ve been neglect­ing you and that’s not fair. You guys are and have been my life-blood–some of you for YEARS–and I can nev­er for­get how much that sup­port means to me.

So what’s going on in Tami’s life since Christmas?

Mental Health is on the upswing! I feel like this report has been a LONG time com­ing and I’m so hap­py to final­ly pro­vide it. I asked for a dosage increase of my anti­de­pres­sant and recent­ly com­bined it with some mela­tonin to help me fall asleep at night. I have nev­er felt bet­ter. I don’t know how I was func­tion­ing before–which is some­thing I remem­ber say­ing the first time I was put on this drug. My days are still fraught with spoon-deficits, but I’m much more alert, com­plete­ly SAD-free, and so much hap­pi­er. I’m also main­tain­ing month­ly check­ups with the doc­tor to help keep things this way.

Physical Health is also improv­ing! During one of the many doc­tor vis­its I’ve had late­ly, it was not­ed that I have high cho­les­terol (a hered­i­tary prob­lem) and that my LDL/HDL ratio was almost 1⁄1 (not good). Then the doc­tor said the worst thing I have ever heard. ”You prob­a­bly want to stop eat­ing red meat.” :O People, I almost faint­ed. Cut out red meat?? STOP EATING TRITIP?? I was aghast.

In addi­tion, because of the anti­de­pres­sant, my weight has been creep­ing up. I’ve been at 110 for­ev­er, which is a lit­tle low­er than I want to be (I feel 115⁄120 is my ide­al), so when the gain first start­ed I was excit­ed! But now I’m up to 135 and I had to stop the creep­ing, so I’ve start­ed cycling on a sta­tion­ary train­er a few times a week. That’s feel­ing real­ly good, both in terms of weight (no more creep­ing!) and spoons.

I have (sob!) stopped eat­ing red meat. Now the diet con­sists more of fish and poul­try than it did before, with only the occa­sion­al wist­ful long­ing for a good steak. I’ll give it anoth­er two months, then ask the doc for a blood test again and see if my cho­les­terol has improved. Cross your fin­gers.

So over­all: exer­cise, check! Stable weight, check! Addressing cho­les­terol, check!

I’m writ­ing more than ever before. Opportunities are open­ing up for me left, right, and cen­ter now that I have a few pen names that cov­er dif­fer­ent inter­ests. I’m sud­den­ly in the posi­tion of need­ing to say NO to some things that I would love to par­tic­i­pate in but sim­ply don’t have the time.

Tami Veldura: I’ve recent­ly wrapped up the Tidewater series with a total of 4 books. None of these books has earned out its cov­er art cost, which does make me a lit­tle sad. I think the brand­ing is excel­lent, but because they’re short sto­ries, and because book 1 does­n’t have a sol­id trope, the num­ber of peo­ple pick­ing them up is slim. Having said that, the sell-through (ten­dan­cy for peo­ple to buy book 2 then 3 then 4) is very good! quite a lot of folks will buy all four books in a row which is great!

Next up for Tami, I’ll be re-releas­ing Stealing Serenity in English now that the Italian ver­sion is pub­lished (expect that Soon ™) and I have fin­ished a con­tem­po­rary sus­pense nov­el that just released called Zero Day Exploit. I’m excit­ed to see how peo­ple respond to this one, as it’s a sub­genre of con­tem­po­rary that I think I could have fun play­ing in.

S. T. Lynn: There are only two books on this pen name at the moment as I don’t have any major plans for it, but I received a bril­liant sur­prise on the first of the year when out of nowhere, Cinder Ella start­ed sell­ing like hot­cakes! It took a few hours for my cowork­ers and I to fig­ure out where the heck the sales were com­ing from, but we iso­lat­ed it to a sin­gle post on Tumblr that has gone viral. Someone request­ed a trans Cinderella sto­ry, a 2nd per­son replied with Cinder Ella’s blurb and cov­er art, and a third per­son post­ed the link to ama­zon for peo­ple to buy it! I don’t know any­one involved but the whole stack of replies when around Tumblr like a wild­fire!

Cinder Ella has earned out its cov­er art and edit­ing as a con­se­quence and con­tin­ues to sell about 10$ worth of copies every day since. I am SO. STOKED. I don’t have any future work planned with any cer­tain­ty for S.T. Lynn yet. I have vague inter­est in writ­ing a Little Mermaid retelling with a trans MC but again, noth­ing firm. Unfortunately, any­thing I’d want to put out on Lynn would have to be fund­ed by my earn­ings on oth­er books as the audi­ence for sweet trans sto­ries is hard to reach.

Anna Morgan: Back in ear­ly 2018 I released a sto­ry in the Powyrworld uni­verse that was ini­tial­ly sold as part of a bun­dle. The bun­dle did ok, but when sales dropped, I recieved the rights back and I have since re released that book (Dragon Solstice) as a stand-alone. Sales are low, but steady and I believe addi­tion­al nov­els in the Powyrworld series would sup­port it.

I now have a 5 book series con­cept for Powyrworld that, if pop­u­lar, I can eas­i­ly iter­ate into addi­tion­al 5 book sea­sons. What lit­tle I’ve run past my writ­ing group has been well recieved, and I’m just look­ing for a place in the sched­ule to start out­lin­ing these .

London Kemaker: Late last year there was dis­cus­sion in my writ­ing group to col­lec­tive­ly write and pub­lish mpreg sto­ries fea­tur­ing drag­on shifters. I’ve been strug­gling to find a prof­itable sub­genre for Tami, and I was­n’t sure mpreg fit with hir brand, but mpreg would allow me to write urban fan­ta­sy to a recep­tive and vora­cious audi­ence, so I released two short works under the London name in ear­ly Feb. The Dragon Heir’s Omega and A Valentine’s Omega. Both of these were meant to be com­mer­cial works, so they touch on themes of preg­nan­cy and fam­i­ly that aren’t com­mon in my oth­er books, but they also intro­duce an aspect of a much larg­er UF world that I’m very inter­est­ed in play­ing in.

I have a tril­o­gy con­cept in mind for London, the first of which is The Dragon Assassin’s Omega. Book one is teased at the end of Heir and I already have almost 20k writ­ten.

–//–

I have quite a few books I owe you, a few pieces of art I want to give you, and some spe­cif­ic updates that will come in the next post. I’m puz­zling out how to push these blogs to sub­scribers, so you don’t have to come check. I may have to cre­ate a mail­ing list.

I hope your start of the year has been pro­duc­tive, peace­ful, and prof­itable. I’ll be back next week with more details about, well, every­thing!