Curses!

I have good news and bad news for anyone anticipating a sequel/end of a trilogy.  I have been working on rebooting the Playing with Tigers series, and plotting out the third, I have been editing my brains out on the Swordmaster Dasan series, and I've been putting in plenty of time on my upcoming wolf shifter stories.  I even threw together a crappy cover for the Dasan series, which is slightly less bad than the one I've been using!  YAY!

Problem - I've been working on them all, so none are done...

Time constraints here have made it so that I can only work for about two hours a day on anything that I'm writing before I need to go and tend to some manner of bullshit.  I apologize for the delay, but I can't work around the schedule that I am being stuck into, no matter how much I want to.  And trust me when I say that I really, really want to.  If I don't write, the people who know me well can tell.  It's sick, withdrawals that are comparable to my failed attempt to quit smoking.  My husband caught me talking to the Kuerig and losing an argument against it a few days ago, it's rather pathetic and somewhat entertaining.

My thanks to a shiny nickel and Jconn for yelling at me, lol!  I tend to forget that people give half of a crap about my older books, since the nature of them ensures that they aren't discussed often face-to-face and the PWT series is so large that only two of my friends even read it.  Speaking of which, I want to take a moment to remind people that the Playing with Tigers series is based on feedback and suggestions when it comes to the sex scenes.  In the first book, the graphic rape, and the second time Keel stays with Loki are prime examples of suggestions/challenges that were issued by friends.  Jade's kink as well, now that I think of it.  I will be hacking the second one to pieces and spicing it up, because I had left out the bondage between Loki and Keel since I had received requests for so much other stuff.  A large portion of the racier scenes hit the folder of no return because the first in depth review that I had stated that the first book had way to much sex in it, and I shrugged and took the advice.  The only problem is that it is now very boring lol.  So I'll be fixing that after I fix the first and finish the third SMdasan book.

And if by chance my shiny nickel finds her way here, I had a guilty laugh over the *brow knit* line that had coffee running out of my nose.  Well played, Miss.  The Cat & the Crow was the first book that I took my time with, and as a result, the ones before it are very obnoxious to read.  Amateur writing at it's worst, I apologize again haha.  I will get to your Playing with Tigers 3 after I finish the other series that accompanies it, I promise. 

Which brings me to Swordmaster Dasan 3 - This book is trying to kill me.  I keep changing my mind over how I want things to go, and then arguing with myself.  I think that I have like, six versions of it now?  The problem that I backed myself into is a difficult one to explain, because I don't want to give much away.  Let's just say that Kyo is a violent lover and Loki is in a position that makes that impossible to work with.  I refuse to have Kyo drop the bondage and humiliation tactics, because unlike some people, I don't believe that it's a disease that can be cured, merely a taste that is acquired.  Once it's there, it can't be forgotten. 

I'd know.

Moving on, I'm trying to decide if I want to re-release both of my earlier books for free, since I've made virtually nothing off of them when compared to the new one.  Especially Playing with Tigers, since bisexual romance erotica is such a small and specific field to write in.


Anyway, I am going to go and get to work, the clock is ticking and I have a huge amount to get done.

Also, this.

I may not use that for the cover, but if you know what it is, perhaps that's enough to convince people that I am working on it, haha 

Off I go, happy hunting everyone!  Friend/follow me on goodreads, I lounge on there when writing isn't possible.

S. <3

Snowstorms call for Deathmatches

For anyone who may not know because they don't live in New England, or plain don't care, we just had a storm run through and flip all of our tables.  The media has a tendency to take every weather warning and blow it out of proportion for our area, which makes it extremely difficult to discern what will actually be dangerous and what they are trying to terrify us into watching them talk about.  And on occasion, even they're surprised, which doesn't lend them much credibility. 

I have an example!  This was a 'slight flood chance' in my last apartment.  Notice the amazing driving skills of Massachusetts citizens.  That 'minor' flood turned out to be one of the worst we ever had, and destroyed most of the bridges in the area and ended up isolating entire city blocks because the road had become a river.  

Look at that car in the background, you know he was going to try to cross until he saw that car-turned-fishing bobber.  What you can't see is my husband and I laughing and sipping our coffee from our perch on the trunk of my car or the ducks that were swimming in the parking lot to the left. 

Well, this time, the bastards were sadly right.  Bastards. 

As prepared as ever, I was working on my new novel and of course, the power went out juuuust long enough that my computer fainted.  We live in the backwater end of nowhere, so it's sort of normal for the power to just take a quick break and come back.  Not wanting to deal with that bullshit all night, I powered up the pc, and figured, "Okay.  I'll print it and read it on the couch."  My new printer is weird, it prints from the last page backwards to the first.  So, when the power went out after four pages, it left me with part of one scene that I didn't need to be reminded of, because I had just written it. 

I glared at my husband, at the printer and then the monitor and in the words of some of my first role models, I told all three that this meant war.  My next attempt got me half of one more page, then the attempt after that my printer ran out of paper and after I reloaded it, I got less than ever.  This carried on until I admit defeat and went upstairs with many copies of one scene that I had already read. 

And the power stayed on.  Are you laughing, because my eye was twitching haha.  For an hour, no breaks in power.  So, I snuck downstairs, went to print it again, and out it went.   For good.  My husband blames me for my war with the electricity, because I had clearly offended it by assuming a truce would be had, and it had undermined me and hurt his programming in the process. 

Having no power means having no heat, but if you have well water instead of city water, then the electric pump is useless and you don't have that necessary water either.  That left the woodburning stove and the grill as our only functioning utilities, which had been more than enough when we had lost power for five days in the summer.  Not the same in a blizzard. 

The house only dropped to 45 degrees on the first night, but I was very eager to accept the invite from my brother and crash the hell out of his place, because he not only had power; he had internet.  And a kuerig, so I wouldn't even need to bring mine or murder anyone. Good thing I left, when we did end up coming back to check the house had gone down to 38...

Despite other driver's best efforts we arrived at my brother's safely.  Yes, thank you to man in the SUV with rear wheel drive for demonstrating how to spin wildly out of control at 10 mph.  You would think people that live in Massachusetts would know how to deal with snow and you would be absolutely wrong.  They see it fall and look at it as if they've never seen it before, screaming, "White demon powder is falling from the sky!!!  I am amazed by its beauty so much that I wish to celebrate by crashing my vehicle into the nearest object!"

Trip and new surroundings aside, I enjoyed my work break more than I thought I would.  I spent a night with searing hot coffee and every multiplayer steam game that I had shooting zombies/mutants/dragons/ghosts and/or my brothers in the face.  Some of my best ideas come to me when I'm not looking for them, I think that's common for everyone.  Tarro's speech in The Cat & the Crow about how amusing it is to have a problem and stumble on the solution purely by chance was something I had said the afternoon of the same day that I wrote it because it's true to life.  When you give up, inspiration hits. 

Not allowed to smoke in my brother's apartment, I eventually caved and went outside in an outfit that had me looking like a secondhand runway model, knee deep in snow, and when I looked around I had a chill.  Not from the cold, mind you, from a story idea being created and finalized in an instant.   I started writing it as soon as I had the opportunity, and in two evenings of working it's already at 15k words on the draft.  I even used the life out of my new keyboard, but it's cool; I had a spare.  It may be done before my new novel, because it has my interest and gratitude for popping into my head.  And the more I work on it, the better the ideas are that are coming to me.  

It just goes to show that senselessly murdering hordes of imaginary friends can solve almost any problem. (claim subject to reality) 

Passion returned, writers block murdered - my thanks for the crippling storm!

Also, I found my music for my homoerotic werewolf story.  Stories now, actually. 

I win!

Also, SMD 1 & 2 are going to be republished in the upcoming weeks as free e-books.  So, yay for that!

Much love to everyone and my wishes for the very best Valentine's Day that you can have. The storm tried to kill me and my family and we came back just fine, thought I'd let my friends who read this nonsense know what's up. 

S. K. <3

Now, back to Sadko...

It's all in my headset

I mentioned before that I was working on a piece with wolf shifters, and because my friends want to read it I've been forcing myself to stay on task, which is surprisingly difficult.  I had decided to do the book because I had some ideas, and I was asked by a few people to do my own spin on the wolf craze.  I just can't find the right freaking music to use to zone out while I write it...

The Cat & the Crow was easy work because of a playlist that only had three songs.  That might've driven my husband slowly insane, since he can hear what I'm listening to from his desk, I put the volume on my headset so high.  But, it let me get into the story again in an instant, and the overall feeling that Tarro held through most of the book was set by one song in particular.  (Gaelic storm - the storm.  For any who were curious.)  The song itself inspired the scene where he's standing in the rain and staring at the sky when I happened across it.  So, in many ways music is necessary for me to write.

One broken headset and a depleted collection of mp3's and CD's later, I am stuck haha.  Not for long, I never am, thankfully.  Already have another headset, fear not.  But the lack of theme song is making it very hard to decide what direction I want the end of the book to take, and...  well anyone that has read my stuff knows I try to do a lot in each book.  It could go anywhere.  I give myself various plot threads and a mix of music, coffee, and insomnia show me the best way to braid all of those interesting threads into one fun story.

I have, however, found plenty to inspire a lot of the folklore and belief system for them.  I kind of backed myself into a corner in my previous books by describing the "Kyathe" people, or "People of the Wolf" as having a very rich background in storytelling.  It means I have to apply myself.

I'll be uploading the prologue from it on Goodreads, since a few people have expressed a mild interest in it and I'm nearly satisfied with the beginning.  The ending is a different story, but rest assured, I will find a way and kick its ass.  Then, I'm off to hunt appropriate steampunk werewolf homoerotic music.  You know, after typing that I realize why maybe I'm having some trouble haha

Happy hunting and a huge thank you to everyone who has expressed an opinion about any of my work.  :)

S. <3

For anyone who's actually curious, this was my playlist for the last book;
Gaelic Storm - The Storm
Parov Stelar - The Snake
Parov Stelar (again!) - Booty Swing

(last one's quite awesome, just saying.)