Will you bite the hand that feeds you?

I'm listening to Nine Inch Nails basically non-stop while I finish writing Gray Moon Rising. I know they aren't talking about werewolves in "The Hand that Feeds," but it's pretty good werewolf music anyway. ;)

I thought I would be done with the rough draft of Gray Moon Rising by now (like a week ago, actually), but as usual, I'm coming up against the brick wall of my deadline almost finished, which is always so darn frustrating. My laptop went out of commission for several days, so I had to switch to writing on the iPad, and it's much harder. Then I switched from Word to Scrivener for drafting—and you guys were right, this program is the bomb—and the learning curve put me a couple more days behind. Bad timing, I know.

I'm back on track, though, and I do think I'm actually going to hit my deadline for this for once. I think I'll wrap up the rough draft on May 31st, just like I promised myself. It's not ahead of schedule, but it's not behind. I think this is the first time I'll actually be on time! Ever!

Getting close to the end for Rylie and Seth is really hard, though. Finishing a series is another first for me. I've been carrying these characters around in my head and heart since I wrote Six Moon Summer in November 2010, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I don't have any new exploits planned for them. I think the story wraps up well, and in a satisfying way, so I there won't really be any other opportunities for adventure. Once I write THE END, that really will be THE END. It feels so weird.

I'm going to do a cover reveal in a couple days. Maybe as soon as tomorrow or the day after, actually. I have to get in touch with everyone. So you'll all know what it's about very soon. :)

It's going to be nice having a little more time to do new stories, though. I've been wanting to get more steampunk out there so The 19 Dragons has friends. I'd also kind of like to dabble in other genres, but I'm not sure how or where just yet. It would be personally challenging to write a romance novel, so I could try PNR. I might also wrap up some half-completed manuscripts on my hard drive and see how that goes.

But enough of what I think! What do YOU think? What would you all like to see next? More YA? More steampunk? More UF? A romance novel? Throw your squishy opinions at me!

(And don't forget, I'm offering review copies of GMR when it's ready in a couple weeks!)

Getting shizz done. Or not.

The last two weeks were amazing for productivity. I wrote 90% of Gray Moon Rising, I did lots of reading, and I'm getting Dark Union together.

Then I did something very, very stupid. On Saturday (my last good writing day), I looked at how many scenes were left of Gray Moon Rising—just four or five—and decided I could finish that weekend. Less than 10k of the book remaining? Dude, no problem. On my personal Twitter for friends and family, I said something like: "If Odin and Starbucks are kind to me, this book will be done by Monday."

Ha. Ah ha ha.

I should have known it was too easy. This has been the easiest book in the whole entire world to write. 45k in two weeks? No problemo! I was confident the book would be out in June. But the last leg has shattered under me and I. cannot. finish. it.

It doesn't help that my laptop has spontaneously decided that working is overrated, so I'm doing everything from my iPad right now. It's surprising how much I can do with this thing, but I can't finish a stinky book. So instead I'm doing lots of reading (right now, Breakers by Ed W. Robertson, really good sci-fi thriller, go pick it up), lots of sitting around in my underwear, and lots of procrastinating.

What else is new, amiright?

I am still going to have this book done in a week. No doubt about it. This thing MUST be complete by May if I hope to have everything else running on deadline. But I think I've been working a little too hard: I wrote and edited Darkest Gate over the last couple of months, I have a jillion things to edit, and my brain just can't wrap itself around the idea of plowing on.

So I need your help! Give me your best "getting shizz done whether you feel like it or not" tips. Bonus points if it includes red wine or chocolate or something else delicious. And... go!

Dude, where are you?

I have not been blogging much lately. I have also been mostly avoiding Twitter, Facebook, my email, and the outside world at large. This has made some of my long-term friends and readers ask: Dude, where are you?


Short answer: Monterey.

Long answer: Getting lots of work done, spending lots of time with my son, and hiding... in Monterey.

I have come to realize that blogging is a unique skill all its own. My writer buddy David Gaughran has this skill in spades. So does urban fantasy-writing peer Shea MacLeod. And you should follow both of their blogs for oodles of entertainment while I'm not posting anything.

As for my skill in blogging? Not so much. It takes a lot of time and energy, and I'm not even very good at it. My strength is in writing fiction. So I'm focusing much more on writing the next book than on writing the next blog post.

As far as Twitter goes, I'm much better at that (or at least the fact I have almost 3000 followers says I must be kinda better at that). There is nothing I LOVE more than sitting down for a nice long Twitter chat. But again, this is very time and energy consuming. I should really be writing fiction.

Ooooor spending time with my Chubby McChubberson toddler, who is now nineteen months old (!!!).

Look at that faaaaaace~

So this week, I did my post-Darkest Gate victory lap around the Bay Area. By now, you're well aware that I mark every book release with a vacation; this one was for us to visit fishies at a very lovely aquarium. Remember how I mentioned I'm crazy about Star Trek IV? The one with the whales? An important part of the movie takes place in a (heavily fictionalized) Monterey Bay Aquarium, so I got to dork out over that.

All in all, it was a really nice visit. We saw pretty sharks, a kelp forest, lots of jelly fish, and hiked around a much lower elevation than my native habitat, which always kinda makes me feel like a superhero.

We also visited John Steinbeck's disembodied head.

I've already picked the vacation spot for my next book release, by the way: Portland. But that's getting ahead of myself, isn't it?

Aside from that, I've mostly been working a lot. Red Iris Books is demanding a lot of attention lately. I'm editing a few books for other authors, doing some sparing cover design, and refusing to wear pants no matter what because I'm self-employed and that's what I do, dammit!

Gray Moon Rising is actually over half-complete. More like 70%, as a matter of fact. I'm going to finish the rough draft in the next week or so, reveal the cover while I edit, and then publish it as soon as I can. I think you guys will love this one. Or at least, I hope you will. I'm really tearing my hair out over it, and because I have short choppy mom hair, I don't have all that much to rip out at this point. So if you don't like it, I'm probably going to be bald. (More thoughts on writing the end of a series later.)

I also have Dark Union underway, and it will be out shortly before/after GMR. So as you can imagine, I'm tearing my hair out over that too.

I've recently gotten the first fifteen minutes of the proof for the Death's Hand audiobook, and that's not good for the state of my hair either.

And I really should be working on a Super Sekrit project with one of my writer friends. But I'm not. I'm a horrible person. Argh.

Anyway, this is what all of this amounts to: Every day, I write 3000-5000 words (which is a pretty decent amount, fyi), read a couple short stories, do some graphic stuff, email other writers, edit a few pages of the project du jour, listen to my Kindle read submissions to me, and go to sleep at the end of the day somehow feeling like I have accomplished nothing.

At some point, something's gotta give. It's driving me crazy. Why do I keep overbooking myself like this?

So I really appreciate my time where it's just me and my soft, cuddly, smart-as-hell-and-smarter-every-day ball of giggles, boogers, and poop. Especially when we're enjoying that time by the ocean together. And I'm on Twitter, Facebook, and my blog less and less so I can make that happen.

Serenity.

If you would like to keep up with me, I am a tiny bit better at maintaining my author page on Facebook than anywhere else. I do check to see who's posted on my wall, for instance. So feel free to bug me there. :)

In the meantime, shh. I'm writing.

The Darkest Gate is available now!

So it was only a couple (okay, a few) months later than I intended, but it's FINALLY here! After lots of blood, sweat, and green tea, I've got the book written/edited/proofed/formatted and I'm stinking done with it. Now it's all yours. :)

When Elise Kavanagh retired from demon hunting, she swore it would be permanent. But an attack from a powerful necromancer forced her back into the business, and now she’s trying to balance her normal boyfriend and normal job with everything supernatural. 


Mr. Black is a demon hunter gone rogue. He’s enslaving angels and stealing ethereal artifacts in pursuit of forbidden immortality, and an old grudge drives him to make his final stand in Elise’s territory. Destroying her life and killing her friends isn’t the goal, but it’s a definite perk. 


A demonic overlord offers to join against Mr. Black and protect Elise’s loved ones. All she needs to do is ally with the demons she’s sworn to kill, at the cost of her morals—and maybe her immortal soul. But once she crosses that line, there’s no turning back. 


Nothing is sacred when Heaven and Hell collide on Earth…


I have to say, I'm very proud of this book. I mean, seriously, legitimately proud. Like, I would tattoo that cover on my back and when people say "wtf are you doing with a book cover on your back?" I would say "IT'S BECAUSE I'M PROUD OF IT DON'T JUDGE ME."

But in all seriousness, I worked hard on this thing. It's the most polished, most "complete" book I've ever produced. (Thanks to Katja for that word, and also for the nice review.) It's this awesome action/adventure thing of epic proportions, I tackled a few subjects that were very challenging for me, and I feel like it really made me grow as a writer. The next one, Damnation Marked, is going to be even better.

I also hit the Hot New Releases list for contemporary fantasy in the top 25 yesterday, which is pretty neato. You like me. You really, really like me. :)

So this book is available to purchase for a few different devices:
Kindle
Nook (the cover's not working, but it's there, I promise)
Other formats

I'll have the iBookstore as soon as possible, but that's a little slowish. Sorry! If you happen to grab a copy, I would be deeply appreciative for an honest review wherever you pick it up. Death's Hand will be sunsetting from its run with KDP Select in a couple weeks, so that one's soon to follow too.

I really hope you enjoy this book. Damnation Marked is underway, and I'm shooting for an October release. But there will probably be something else in just a few weeks, so to give you a not-too-sneaky hint...

Sharing my old school books, yo

I'm still waiting to get The Darkest Gate back from my last proofreader, so I'm feeling pretty antsy. I NEED TO GET THIS BOOK OUT. In the meantime, though, I thought it would be fun to share one of my very, VERY old books with you guys—the kind of novel all writers produce as beginners that should never see the light of day.

A little back story:

I wrote my very first novel when I was thirteen years old and spent the next few years “mastering the craft.” Everything I wrote at this time was equally terrible and fairly short. I completed my next book at seventeen years old, but it was summarily rejected by every single literary agent in the business, much to my disappointment. This book was called Hunter.

Self-publishing wasn’t much of an option at the time, so the book was “trunked.” But I kept revisiting it, unable to get the idea of a young female exorcist out of my head, and I went through a good three or four drafts on Hunter. The sixth draft was retitled Death’s Hand and became my bestseller. In its current incarnation, Death’s Hand is worlds apart from its predecessor—embarrassingly so—but there are some amusing ways in which they’re similar.

Noteworthy differences between Death’s Hand and Hunter include:

• Elise as a bubbly-but-sarcastic, Hello Kitty-loving Mary Sue, who lives in the college dorms with her best friend Betty. Her parents are dead, not that you can tell from her bright disposition. But don’t all heroes have dead parents? 
• Daniel (who you would know as James) as a professor from England, whose witchiness is barely touched upon. 
• Anthony as some blond guy named Justin.
• Lucinde as a little girl strangely named Clarice. 
• No kopides or aspides.
• No cohesive plot worth speaking of. 

There are quite a few other differences as well, but there are also a lot of concepts and faces you should find familiar. Hunter is much more of a young adult novel, and some of you might actually prefer Elise as a spunky, engaging first-person narrator. Despite being over six years old, it’s kind of a fun read, and I hope you enjoy it.

So if you're feeling masochistic, go ahead and grab your free copy off Smashwords!

Captain, there be whales here

Confession time: I kinda have a Thing for whales.
  
This wouldn't be embarrassing, except it's how I got my thing for whales that makes me blush. There are a lot of perfectly good, non-embarrassing reasons to think they're amazing:

• Whales are smart as hell.
• They're flipping huge.
• They're completely beautiful.
• Most of them are perfectly nice, and the ones that aren't are perfectly badass (see: orcas).

But that's not why I have a Whale Thing. It's because of Star Trek.

  

  

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was my favorite movie as a kid, which meant I made my family watch the VHS with me over and over and over until the tape disintegrated. It's probably the silliest of the Trek movies (let's not discuss #5, mmkay?) because there's a giant candy bar in space that insists it needs to talk to whales or there will be TOTAL DESTRUCTION. But whales are extinct, so the crew travels back in time to retrieve a single pair of humpback whales to restore the species and communicate with the alien candy bar race.

  

Yeah. Uh. I mentioned I'm a dork, right?

  

Even if my Whale Thing is firmly rooted in Epic Geekery, whales are still amazing. I went on to learn everything I could about them from such reliable childhood sources as picture books and watching Star Trek IV a few more times. As an adult, one of my biggest dreams is to get to see whales live and up close.
  
Unfortunately, these beautiful, intelligent creatures are in danger. If I ever hope to see whales up close--and if my grandchildren hope to have a chance to do the same--we have to stop harmful fishing practices, take care of our oceans, and educate people about the amazingness that is whales. (Candy bar alien species not required.)
  
Where am I going with this? And how does this have anything to do with urban fantasy?
  
Author Kendall Grey has gone ahead and taken my TWO FAVORITE THINGS and put them into one book. (That is, urban fantasy and whales, not urban fantasy and Star Trek. But please tell me if someone makes that happen.) Her book is now available in paperback and e-book for Kindle (MOBI) and Nook (EPUB). INHALE is the first book in the JUST BREATHE trilogy. Kendall is donating all profits from the sale of the trilogy to programs that educate people about whales and the challenges they face. EPIC!
    
Watch the video to find out why:

  

  

Strangers in reality, inseparable in dreams…

After years of suffocating under her boss’s scrutiny, whale biologist Zoe Morgan finally lands a job as director of a tagging project in Hervey Bay, Australia. Success Down Under all but guarantees her the promotion of a lifetime, and Zoe won’t let anything—or anyone—stand in her way. Not the whale voices she suddenly hears in her head, not the ex who won’t take no for an answer, and especially not the gorgeous figment of her imagination who keeps saving her from the fiery hell of her dreams.


Gavin Cassidy hasn’t been called to help a human Wyldling in over a year, which is fine by him. Still blaming himself for the death of his partner, he keeps the guilt at bay by indulging in every excess his rock star persona affords. That is, until he’s summoned to protect Zoe from hungry Fyre Elementals and learns his new charge is the key to restoring order in the dying Dreaming. He never expects to fall for the feisty Dr. Morgan…nor does he realize he may have to sacrifice the woman he loves to save an entire country.

Kendall Grey and I worked together on the END: Anthology, and I can tell you that she's an incredible writer. No joke. But do keep in mind that this book has naughty language and sexy times, so it's not suitable for readers under the age of 18. (Sorry!)

  

100% of profits from sales of the trilogy will be donated to programs that educate people about whales and the challenges they face. So what are you waiting for? Go grab your copy!