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Planning and Plotting

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks dealing with some personal life stuff connected with this time of year. It still hasn’t completely died down (tomorrow, December 1, is the anniversary of two very difficult events in my life), but I’m hoping things will even out and I’ll get through the end of November/beginning of December this year with no additional issues.

Meanwhile, I have gotten some things done.

Last weekend, I finished proofing Bring on the Broccoli (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 7). Next step is to get that book formatted, and then it will be ready for its January 9 release date. Meanwhile, it’s available for preorder on Amazon.

I spent this past week planning book 8 of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat, Sorry About the Seitan. This is setting up to be a really difficult book to write and read because of the emotional content, and I’m hoping I’m up to the task of authentically showing what Tobias Rogan, Anax of the United States, is dealing with at this point. I’ll be starting to write the first draft within the next day or two, and Sorry About the Seitan is tentatively scheduled for release in July 2025.

I hope everyone’s November is coming to a positive, or at least neutral, close.

First Draft Done!

In October, a week or so after I released Ebb and Flow, I started writing the sequel to it, which is tentatively titled Life and Time.

Yesterday, I finished writing that sequel!

I think that’s one of the fastest first drafts I’ve ever done. And I’m pretty happy with the story, though there are a couple of dangling plot threads I’ll need to remove when I edit the book. That’s the result of thinking I knew where the story was going and then having the characters completely take over.

I’m going to be pushing myself with this book, because it’s planned for release in April 2025, so I want to make sure I get all of the editing and so forth done. But given how fast I wrote it, I’m hopeful the editing will go smoothly as well.

I loved being back in Quinn and Malachi’s world, and finishing the first draft was rough because I didn’t want to leave them. So there’s more than likely going to be another book in the series, but I haven’t planned that yet….

It’s Been a Bit…

I didn’t blog the past couple of weeks because I’ve been going my second round of fighting pneumonia, and that’s made it a bit hard to think and function. I’m still not well, and it’s going to take a while before I am.

But I wanted to blog in response to what happened in the U.S. on November 5. For many, if not most, of those of us who are LGBTQIA+ (I’m nonbinary),  who have a uterus, or who are not white, Christian Americans, the results of the election were not what we’d hoped. I’m not here to engage in political debate, and I’ll remove any comments in favor of the incoming President and the policies that have been proposed. (Yes, I can do that. This is my blog, not a public forum, and I am not a government entity. Your first amendment rights are not being violated if I remove your comment.) I’m not actually here to talk about politics directly at all.

I know people who are flat out terrified right now about what this will mean for them and/or people they love. I’m one of those people. My white, cisgender husband doesn’t get it; when I said my kids and I were upset about the election results, he said, “I don’t think there’s anything to be upset about.” Um, yeah… because you’re a white, cisgender man. You will not be affected by whatever comes next. But people you love–your wife, your stepchildren, your grandchildren–will be.

I don’t have solutions to offer. I’m definitely not going to resort to platitudes like “We’re all in this together” or “We got through it once, we’ll get through it again.” As nice as it would be to believe those platitudes, I don’t. I’m already aware of people (no one I know personally, but I’m bracing myself for that) who have ended their lives rather than waiting to have their lives destroyed.

Being queer is an act of defiance. Writing queer literature–which includes male/male romance–is an act of defiance. Those things, I will continue. I wish I knew how else to defy.

On Facebook the day after election day, I posted:

“For those who are struggling, terrified, and in pain as a result of the election, there are two things you can do: Curl up in a corner and cry, or start finding ways and allies to make things better in any small way possible.
It is entirely acceptable to do both.”

Right now, I’m doing both. And that is okay.

The Best-Laid Plans…

I try to plan in advance what books I’ll be working on and when.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that those plans often get changed.

This is partly on me. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew, so to speak, and plan too many projects in too short an amount of time. That was the case this year, when originally I’d planned to release 6 books. Accidentally deleting my Amazon account back in May and having to republish everything slowed me down. So did struggling to write the first draft of Bring On the Broccoli (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 7), since having to scrap most of the original draft and start the whole book over ate into the time I’d set aside for a different project. Which is why Ebb and Flow, originally intended as a September release, ended up being released in October instead.

Another thing that contributed to the change in plans was that two of the books I’d originally intended to release this year weren’t actually paranormal romance. I wanted to rerelease my Can’t Drag Me Down series, three contemporary romance books originally published between 2013-2016. The series was another example of changes in plan; I’d spoken with my editor at the publisher where these books were being published (Loose Id) and discussed at least two additional books in the series, but right about the time I started working on book 4, I started having panic attacks when I sat down to write anything romancey. Then Loose Id closed its doors, so Can’t Drag Me Down wound up being only three books, each of which follows a different drag queen from a club in Boston.

Book 2 of that series, Last Chance Tattoo, takes place in Ludington, Michigan, but the drag queen main character came from Boston. If I’d rereleased the books as planned, I intended to rewrite Last Chance Tattoo to take place in western Massachusetts instead. I also would have ended up doing some rewrites to the other two books to accommodate Remington Real, the drag queen character introduced in Fill the Empty Spaces. The main characters of Can’t Drag Me Down make walk-on appearances in Spaces, and I’d justified rereleasing CDMD by the fact that the series is now directly tied to Fill the Empty Spaces, which *is* paranormal.

But I ultimately decided against doing those rereleases, at least this year. There were several factors in that decision: First, as noted, Bring On the Broccoli took much longer for a workable first draft than I’d anticipated, which took away time I’d budgeted for doing the CDMD rewrites. Second, CDMD is not a paranormal series, despite the tie-in with Fill the Empty Spaces. When I was writing for publishers, a decade-ish ago, I wrote both paranormal and contemporary romance, though even some of the contemporaries had minor paranormal elements. But when I relaunched as Karenna Colcroft in 2022, I planned to focus only on paranormal.

Also… werewolves.

Fill the Empty Spaces is the only book I’ve released since 2022 that *doesn’t* have werewolves, and even that actually does. (Suzannah Daigle, the Boston North Pack healer who appears in some of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat books, makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance in Spaces, in the scene where Del breaks down in Piers Park. In the original draft of Spaces, there was even more of a tie-in with RWDEM characters, but I cut that out in the final draft because it was bogging down the story.) Of the other books, 6 are directly part of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat; the Chance Met duology is connected to RWDEM since one of the main characters of Chance Met is a secondary character in RWDEM; and Ebb and Flow is an intentional spin-off from RWDEM. Hooch and Howls is now also connected (loosely) to RWDEM because the main character of Hooch is also one of the main characters of Ebb and Flow.

Because I am apparently completely incapable of not creating connections and threads between books, whether I intend to or not.

But the point is that of the 11 male/male romance books I’ve released since 2022, 10 of them have werewolves and are either part of or connected to the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series. Fill the Empty Spaces is the outlier, despite Suzannah’s cameo appearance, and its sales seem to reflect that. (A Fighting Chance, book 2 of the Chance Met duology, has sold more poorly than Spaces, but that in large part is due to it only being out for 10 days before I deleted my Amazon account, so it didn’t have as much time to gain an audience. And I’ve slacked on promoting it since I republished it.) So I’m kind of thinking that I need to embrace the werewolfery of it all and keep my books focused on those characters, either through continuations of RWDEM or books that are somehow connected to that series.

Which rules out Can’t Drag Me Down, at least for the time being. It also rules out Dawn Over Dayfield, my suspense-with-romantic-elements novel, which I’d slated for rerelease in April 2025. Dayfield is also not paranormal, but because of the historical aspects of the story, it *feels* paranormal to me. It’s also one of only two of my books to have won an award, first place in the Mystery category of the 2016 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards. (The other book to have won an award is, somewhat ironically, Fill the Empty Spaces…) But if I’m focusing on werewolves, Dayfield doesn’t have a place. And also, after I released Ebb and Flow, the main characters Quinn and Malachi started whispering in my mind’s ear about a sequel… which I’m currently working on.

I don’t know if all the changes in plans I’ve made over the past couple of years means I need to try harder to stick to the plans I make… or means that I need to stop planning more than a couple-few months in advance. But either way, werewolves.

5 Stars!!

I don’t automatically expect my books to get great reviews. Some of that is me being realistic; all books have issues of one kind or another, and not every story is every reader or reviewer’s cup of tea. But some of my lack of expectation of good reviews is due to imposter syndrome: “I suck, my books suck, I screwed up this part, I must have missed something in the edits,” and so on and so forth.

Being an author is hard enough. When anxiety starts telling you you’re a piece of crap and so are your books, it’s even harder.

I released Ebb and Flow on Thursday the 10th. I felt good about the book. When I did the multiple rounds of editing, every time I reached the end of the story, I felt sad that I’d reached the end. I love the main characters, Quinn Boucher and Malachi Powers. But that didn’t mean I completely believed that readers and reviewers would also love it.

As it turned out… they did. Or at least one reviewer did. Linda Tonis of Paranormal Romance Guild gave Ebb and Flow 5 stars! What made me even happier about the review was that the reviewer clearly understood the characters, saying that it’s a “beautiful story” about crafting a new life after trauma and loss, and that Quinn believes he isn’t brave and apologizes for everything, while Malachi recognizes Quinn’s strength and tries to help Quinn see it.

Ebb and Flow isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. There’s an extreme age gap; Quinn is 22, while Malachi is 130. They’re werewolves; werewolves live longer than humans. They’re also fated mates, and whatever “fate” puts mates together apparently doesn’t care about age as long as everyone’s an adult. (In my universe, nearly all werewolves are adults; changing someone who’s under 18 is against werewolf law–with a death penalty imposed on those who violate the restriction. Only two were known to have been changed while they were still under 18; both were changed by a sexual predator, and one of them, Tobias Rogan, killed said predator to keep him from victimizing anyone else.) In addition to the age gap between Quinn and Malachi, they pretty quickly develop a Dominant/submissive dynamic, with Malachi being the dominant partner; that dynamic will appeal to some readers, but others will find it against their tastes, particularly on top of the age gap.

But I know at least one reviewer loved the book, and that feels really good.

With Bated Breath…

(And yes, I did spell “bated” correctly.)

On Thursday, Oct. 10, I’ll be releasing Ebb and Flow. I am so excited about this book. When I did the edits, I was sad about finishing; I wanted to keep reading about Quinn and Malachi. Of course, to keep reading about them, I have to keep *writing* about them…

I do plan to write more about Quinn and Malachi. There are other things going on in their world to follow up on, and then of course there’s the continuing building of their relationship. As fated mates, Quinn and Malachi didn’t choose each other. But they do get to choose whether to be *together*, and what that looks like for them. As of the end of Ebb and Flow, they’re still figuring it out.

I’ve submitted Ebb and Flow to reviewers, at least two of whom are planning to actually review it, and I’m waiting with bated breath to see what they think. And to see what readers think. My joy and love of Quinn and Malachi’s story might not be shared by people who read the book. And in just a few more days, I’ll start finding out.

Ebb and Flow is available for Kindle preorder, and will release in Kindle and paperback on October. 10.

Editing and such

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to work on editing Bring On the Broccoli (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 7). Working on it has been a bit complicated by the fact that I’ve been sick for the past two or three weeks.

At the end of August, I started a new job at a local daycare, which has been absolutely wonderful. I love the job, the kids are incredible, and my coworkers are amazing. But… it’s a daycare. With kids ages 5 months to 5 years. Kids who get sick and don’t know how to, or forget to, cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze. Which means I caught a cold. And then another one. And the second one morphed into full-blown pneumonia. Which is making it really hard to concentrate on things like editing.

Recognizing that I was getting worse, I was smart enough to go to urgent care yesterday after work, and my boss let me leave early so I could go. I’m on antibiotics now, out of work until Tuesday at the earliest, and last night I slept for about 11 hours. Hopefully I’ll kick this to the curb… and hopefully this will be the worst illness I deal with from this job. (I’d love it if it was the LAST illness I had to deal with, but I’m well aware of how unrealistic that is when I’m working at a daycare.)

Meanwhile, I’m making slow but steady progress on the Bring On the Broccoli edits, I’ve got Ebb and Flow ready for its October 10 release, and I’m taking it easy. And my “nurse cat” is taking good care of me.

Blurbs

Sometimes writing a blurb is harder than writing the actual book. The blurb is the little “description” that appears on retail sites and on the back cover of a paperback. It’s meant to attract readers to the story. Which… isn’t easy.

Back in the day, when I was working with publishers, sometimes I had to provide a book blurb, but sometimes the publisher took care of it. And even when it was my responsibility, the editor would often tweak what I sent in. But now, since I’m self-publishing, I’m the only one responsible for the blurbs. And I’m not great at them.

I keep finding myself trying to cram way too much information into my book blurbs. I end up with something that’s more of a synopsis. Which isn’t a horrible thing, but that’s not the purpose of a blurb.  Although it’s taken me a while to get this through my head, the blurb isn’t supposed to summarize the story. It’s supposed to give just hints of the story and the themes and conflicts so readers will want to read the book itself and find out what’s going on.

When I wrote the blurb for Ebb and Flow, I was more intentional about what I was doing, and I posted it for feedback in a Facebook group I belong to that exists for the purpose of people getting feedback on their blurbs. I would say the blurb for Ebb and Flow is still far from perfect, but it’s much better than what I’d written for my other books.

Recognizing that, I spent the past couple-few weeks rewriting the blurbs for my published books. I struggled mightily with a few of them, while others just flowed pretty easily. As with the Ebb and Flow blurb, the new ones on my other books aren’t perfect, but they are better.

The one I think I’m proudest of is the blurb for Fill the Empty Spaces. That was one of the ones that just flowed, and I think it’s the one that’s the biggest improvement over the original. For comparison, here’s the blurb I originally had on Fill the Empty Spaces:
“Austin and Del were the love of each other’s life for two decades–until a drunk driver took Austin away. In his grief, Del leaves his job and pushes away most of his friends. Austin would want him to go on living, but how can he when Austin is gone?
In an effort to help, Del’s friend Remy books them an afternoon at a local cat cafe. There, Del bonds with Charlie, a senior cat who wears sweaters to cover his lost fur, and Lochlan, a human who volunteers at the cafe. On impulse, Del signs up to volunteer there too. Over time, with the friendship of Lochlan, Charlie, and the rest of the resident cats, Del starts to pick up his pieces and create a life without Austin.
As Del and Lochlan’s friendship deepens and Lochlan shares his deepest secrets, Del realizes he’s falling for the other man. He’s finally living again, but can he let himself love again?”

So… that blurb gives way too much summary of the story. Although the cat cafe and Charlie do play roles in the story, they aren’t really the major *parts* of the story, and so probably don’t belong in the blurb. And there’s no indication in the blurb that the story has a paranormal element.

When I had to republish all of my books due to accidentally deleting my Amazon account, I tweaked that blurb… but it ended up even worse, with even MORE TMI and details that didn’t belong in the blurb. The second version:
“Austin and Del were the love of each other’s life for two decades…until a drunk driver ended Austin’s. Now Del struggles to get through each day without his partner.
In an effort to get Del back into the realm of the living, Austin’s honorary sister Remy books an afternoon at a local cat cafe. A visit which changes Del’s existence. He bonds with Charlie, a senior cat with health issues who wears sweaters to cover his lost fur, and with Lochlan, a human who volunteers at the cafe. On impulse, Del signs up to volunteer there too. And with the friendship of Lochlan, Charlie, and the rest of the resident cats, Del begins to live again.
As Del and Lochlan’s friendship deepens, Lochlan admits one of his deepest secrets: He is a psychopomp, a human who guides spirits to the “crossing point” at the time of their death. In his need to understand Austin’s death, Del interrogates Lochlan, and Lochlan turns away from him. During the weeks of no contact, Del emerges more into life, and realizes, in Lochlan’s absence, that he is falling for Lochlan. When they finally reconnect, the sparks are there, but only a few months after Austin’s death, can Del let himself love again?”

Again, it’s more of a synopsis than a blurb. The nature of Lochlan’s deepest secret is meant to be a reveal, both to the reader and to Del, and yet here it is being spoilered in the blurb. And it’s way too long.

Now, here is the current version, the one I’m actually happy with:
Everything was empty.
Not literally. My apartment was still filled with the remnants of my life with Austin. That was the problem.
The things were there. Austin wasn’t, and he never would be again.
Twenty years of love ended in an instant the night a drunk driver hit Del Nethercott’s partner Austin. In his grief, Del has pushed away most of his friends and is barely existing. Austin would want him to go on living, but how can he without the love of his life?
Over the next few months, Del finds his way into his new reality with the help of Austin’s drag sister Remy, a sweater-wearing cat named Charlie… and Lochlan, a man hiding a supernatural secret.
As Del works through his grief, he and Lochlan grow closer, until Del realizes he feels more than friendship for the other man. Only months after losing Austin, Del isn’t ready to love again. But maybe he’s ready to hope.”

Still not perfect. But a vast improvement, in my opinion, over the second version, and a pretty big improvement over the original. No spoilers, no TMI, and it isn’t a synopsis.

I’m still getting the hang of writing blurbs. But I think I’m getting there.

Long week…

I didn’t do a post last week because I was in the middle of doing multiple other things. Good things, but things that really required a lot of brain power.

First, I got a new car. New to me, that is. (It’s actually nearly 10 years old.) This was vital, since my previous car needed nearly $10,000 worth of work to keep it on the road, and at least $4000 just to pass my state’s vehicle inspection. I’ve gotten the  new car registered and inspected, and so far, so good. I have a tendency to name my cars; this one is named Suzannah, partly after the Boston North Pack healer in the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series.

Second, I started a new job. I’m working part time as a “float” at a nearby private daycare. A float is a staff member who covers different classrooms while the main teachers take their breaks or if a main teacher is absent for some reason. The work is tiring, especially with my health concerns, but it’s fun. The kids are already starting to know me and ask if they get to have me in their room that day (the ones who can talk, anyway) or act really excited about seeing me (the ones who can’t talk yet).

And, in the actual writing side of my life, I FINISHED Bring On the Broccoli. Finally! This was the rewrite of the book; I had finished it a couple-few months ago, but I was far from happy with that version, so I started over. I’m now doing final-final proofreading of Ebb and Flow in preparation for releasing that book on Oct. 10 (it’s already available for Kindle preorder), and then I’ll be working on edits for Bring On the Broccoli.

Progress and Process

For far longer than I anticipated, I’ve been working on Bring On the Broccoli (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 7). I wrote a draft that took me over 3 months to complete, which is nearly twice as long as my drafts usually take, and then realized that that draft was mostly unusable. There wasn’t enough action, and Kyle Slidell, my vegan werewolf who narrates this book, was almost entirely just narrating instead of being part of the story. Some aspects of the story didn’t work, and some either contradicted or ignored plot points from the previous books.

So I started over.

I spent about a week doing a brainstorm/outline of the book, which isn’t something I typically do, but this time it felt necessary so I could make sure the book actually proceeded as planned. The brainstorm came to 15 pages, longer than some short stories I’ve written.

And within the first week of working on the new draft, the outline was pretty much out the window. Because my werewolves are oppositional cusses.

I kept working on the book, but after a while decided I needed a new brainstorm/outline so I could keep track of what was going on. I spent about 3 days on the new brainstorm.

And now half of *that* one is out the window.

On the plus side, the book is proceeding much more smoothly than the original draft. Even though the werewolves keep throwing me curveballs. I hope to have this draft finished within the next week or so.

Bring On the Broccoli will be available in January. (Unless the werewolves have other ideas.)