Tag: nonwriting life

I’m Thankful for Werewolves

Posted on by karennacolcroft

(NOTE: This was originally posted on my Facebook profile on March 1, 2025.)

With everything that’s happened in the U.S. in the past couple of days (well, since January 20, really), I’m extremely thankful for werewolves.
Yeah, that paragraph is a bit tongue in cheek. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a bit of a warped/dark sense of humor. I inherited it from my dad; blame him.
But here’s the thing… (Story time, long post ahead. Mild content warning for mention of bullying and self-unaliving ideation, and allusions to domestic abuse.)
I grew up getting bullied a lot. At home and at school. I had undiagnosed depression and PTSD, along with what is still undiagnosed (formally; I’ve had multiple professionals confirm my suspicions) autism. I had few friends. Little to no social life.
But I had my imagination. I had my stories. I started telling stories before I learned how to write; as soon as someone taught me how to hold a pencil and form letters on paper, I started writing those stories down.
I still remember the first story I completed. It was about a five-year-old girl named Maria who was sent to Canada to live with her uncle. Complete wish fulfillment. But I–at age five–wrote it. It was mine. It came out of my brain.
Growing up, writing literally saved my life more than once. There were times I definitely did not want to be alive, but I poured that pain, the anger toward the bullies, all of those emotions into my stories. I wrote about a dozen book-length stories from grades 6-12, all handwritten in spiral notebooks. (I typed a couple of them, but this was before word processors were common, and my typewriter annoyed me.) I still have all of them. They aren’t great, but for a kid between 11-17 years old, they aren’t bad.
When I married my kids’ father, I stopped writing for over a decade because it pissed him off, and it was safer not to piss him off. But it got to the point where the voices of the characters in my imagination overrode the fear. I started writing again. From 2005-2010, I wrote 40 young adult novels that were all part of one overarching series broken into four sub-series. I no longer have all of the originals of those, but that’s because I started rewriting them a year or two ago hoping to publish them, before I realized I didn’t have the mental bandwidth or time right now.
In an indirect way, writing the first book of those 40 led to me being able to get out of that marriage, but that’s another story for another time.
While I was still in that marriage, a friend challenged me to write something “depicting sex in a positive light.” (He was my friend, but also my energy healing mentor, and that was sort of an assignment.) I did. I was actually pretty impressed with it. He helped me come up with the name Karenna Colcroft to write “that sort of thing” under. (He actually suggested Cockroft as the last name, but I thought that was a little too obvious for an author of erotic fiction.)
The friendship ended in 2007, but the writing didn’t. Not then, at least. In fact, through posting stories online, I found my first publisher. Through trying to connect to other authors, I found friends and my second and third publishers. I kept writing. When I met my current husband, he not only didn’t mind that I wrote but actually bragged to other people about it.
From 2009-2017, I had over 80 novels, novellas, and short stories published. The majority were under the Karenna Colcroft name, fairly equally split between heterosexual romance and male/male romance, which I started writing after encouragement from one of my online friends, a man who wrote male/male romance. Some books during that era were young adult fiction under the name Jo Ramsey.
And then my brain fell apart. Not literally, of course, but major burnout led me to start having full-blown panic attacks any time I sat down to write. In 2016, I stopped writing. My last Karenna Colcroft book was published in spring of that year. My last two Jo Ramsey books were published in 2017, but one of those was a rerelease of a book originally published in 2013.
I missed writing. I felt like I wasn’t me anymore without the stories. But until 2020, I couldn’t even contemplate sitting down to write without having a panic attack.
Then I started with some metaphysical nonfiction connected to the business I had. And then, starting in 2021, I wrote some kids’ books, fiction, about a girl in a Pagan family. That was the first fiction I’d written in 5 years.
And later that year, out of boredom, I started rereading some of the Karenna Colcroft books–and decided it was time for some of them to see the light of day again.
Enter the werewolves.
The first male/male romance *novel* (as opposed to short story) I ever wrote was Salad on the Side. A novel about the world’s only gay vegan werewolf and his mate, the sexually submissive Alpha. One book became a 5-book series. Kyle and Tobias, the vegan and his mate, were among my favorite characters ever. So when I decided to self-publish rereleases of my previously-published books, I decided to start with Salad on the Side.
I updated all five of the books in the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series, because they were originally written between 2010-2013, and that showed in the technology and some slang that wasn’t really appropriate back then and definitely wouldn’t be acceptable now.
And then I started writing new things. New romances, even though the romance writing was the first thing to go when I burned out.
And Kyle and Tobias said, “What the hell were you thinking, only giving us five books? There’s a lot more to tell!” So I started expanding Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat, with book 6 released last summer and book 7 released on January 9 of this year.
Book 6 of their series led to two new characters, one of whom literally came out of nowhere. I needed an inciting incident for the story–and there was Quinn Boucher, a 22-year-old recently-changed werewolf who not only captured my attention but rated mentions in every review done of that book, Take Some Tahini. So I spun Quinn and his mate Malachi Powers–a 130-year-old lone wolf who really didn’t want a mate, let alone one as young as Quinn–into their own series. Book 1, Ebb and Flow, came out in October; book 2, Future and Past, will be out next month.
For a little while in 2022 and 2023, I wrote a couple of books that weren’t werewolf-related… but the werewolves won, and there are so many stories flooding my brain that I’ll probably be writing them for a good long time.
When I was growing up, and in the waning years of my first marriage, writing saved my life on multiple occasions. And now, with everything happening in this country and the world, it’s saving my sanity, because being able to spend a few hours a day plunging into a fictional Massachusetts (in Real Werewolves) or Nova Scotia (in the Ebb and Flow series) gives me the breathing room to come back and face the real world.
So, with everything that’s happened since January 20… I am thankful for werewolves.

A Love Letter to My Childhood

Posted on by karennacolcroft
The book I’m currently working on, which is book 3 in my Ebb and Flow series (a spin-off of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat that takes place primarily in Nova Scotia), is rapidly becoming a love letter to the summer cottage my Canadian grandparents (my mother’s parents) owned until I was 14 or so. I spent a week or two nearly every summer visiting those grandparents, and until they sold the cottage, that time was mostly spent there. (This is a picture of a photo I took sometime around 1983 or 1984 of that cottage.)
In Ebb and Flow, one of the main characters, Malachi William Powers, is a 130ish-year-old werewolf from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia…who, in fiction-land, would be an ancestor of mine. My grandmother was a Powers; William is a name given as first or middle name to a few of my relatives on that side of the family. (I just really like the name Malachi.) Because of that, when I needed a relatively isolated place for lone wolf Malachi to live, I chose my grandparents’ cottage. I believe, though I may be incorrect, that the cottage was built by my grandmother’s father, meaning it was a Powers family cottage.
In real life, the cottage was sold when I was in my teens. I haven’t been inside since, and the exterior doesn’t resemble the cottage I remember visiting. But in fiction-land, in the Ebb and Flow series proper, the cottage’s appearance is what I recall from the late 1970s-early 1980s. In Malachi’s prequel to the series, Hooch and Howls, the cottage isn’t as clearly described but resembles what I imagine it would have looked like if it was there around 1930, when Hooch takes place.
The first two books of the series, Ebb and Flow, and Future and Past, have the Canada-set parts of the story taking place at the home of Silas Creighton, the Anax (werewolf ruler) of Canada, who lives on a private island in Mahone Bay. Creighton being another name from my childhood; though not related to me as far as I know, the Creighton family was close with the Powerses and Pykes, and as in the books, the Creightons owned the cottage next to the one my grandparents owned. (I think Creightons bought the cottage when my grandparents sold it, but again, I can’t remember for sure.) In Ebb and Flow, Malachi briefly brings his mate Quinn to the cottage just to show it to him and pick up some clothes, but we don’t get the full picture of it.
This third book, Storm and Shelter, which I’m currently working on, starts in Massachusetts, where nearly the first half of the story takes place, then goes briefly to Silas’s…and then the rest of the book takes place in and around Malachi’s cottage when Quinn finds himself unable to tolerate staying at Silas’s after the events of Future and Past. Which means I’ve spent the past three and a half weeks diving into my admittedly not entirely accurate memories of the cottage and its appearance and trying to put the description into words. I do have a few pictures of the interior and exterior of the place from my childhood, but a lot of the writing is just relying on my memory.
In my childhood, that cottage was one of my safe places. One of the places where I knew I would be treated with love, and where the parent who constantly criticized and yelled at me would be shut down by my grandparents. Where I learned how to construct a wooden bench that was so rickety that only my then-2-year-old cousin could sit on it. Where I spent hours in the sand and the salt water.
In writing this book, I’m giving my inner child back that safe place, at least for a little while, as well as giving the home in fiction-land to one of the favorite fictional couples I’ve created, Malachi Powers and Quinn Boucher. Some of the description in the first draft of Storm and Shelter will probably be cut out for length and pacing, but for now, I’m indulging it.

Editing and such

Posted on by karennacolcroft

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.

My Executive is Dysfunctioning

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Being neurodivergent, I have a brain that sometimes cooperates with me and sometimes doesn’t. The more I have on my figurative plate, the less my brain cooperates.

Over the past week or so… it hasn’t exactly been cooperating. I’ve been deep in the thick of revisiting how I approach writing and publishing. Since I started self-publishing a little over 2 years ago, I’ve looked at it as something I want to have fun with that might also bring in some royalties. Which is what it has been.

But more and more, I’m realizing that I want to reach more readers and have more visibility in the world. I want to be one of those authors that someone thinks to recommend when someone else asks for werewolf books, or less-known authors, or books with cats in them, or whatever. I want to be more intentional and thoughtful about what I write, when I write and release it, and how I let people know it exists. So I’ve been doing a deep dive into planning, reading or watching info from authors who are where I want to be, reconsidering my writing schedule, and so on.

On top of doing that, I’ve also been driving rideshare, continuing my weekly volunteering at a local cat cafe, keeping the house reasonably clean, trying to make sure I have something resembling supper ready for my kid when they come home from work (I call them my kid because it’s the only gender-neutral term we’ve agreed on for their relationship to me; “child” doesn’t work because they aren’t one, and they don’t like “offspring” or “spawn”, but they aren’t a kid, they’re in their 20s), trying to find a job that *isn’t* driving rideshare, trying to replace the car that I’ve had for five years that has been pretty much destroyed by driving rideshare…you get the idea.

(This week at the cat cafe, I apparently was the official lap… here’s a picture of Speedy, or as one of my friends referred to him, “a fluffy raincloud,” lying on me.)

There’s been a lot going on. And sometimes, my brain just glitches out. Like yesterday, when I literally could not figure out how to bring a paper prescription to the pharmacy, get the meds from the pharmacy, do the grocery shopping, and do rideshare. I wound up not getting the prescription filled. (It’s for the kid’s cat, who needs eye drops periodically, so it wasn’t urgent.) But I also wound up not being able to figure out anything to make for supper, because I’m not adept at cooking and struggle to follow recipes–or to even find a recipe I want to try–and by the time I got home with the groceries, my brain was just like “Nope, not cooking, screw it.” I had a microwaved veggie burger and ice cream for supper. Kid fortunately had gotten food on the way home from work so didn’t need me to prepare anything for them.

Today… who knows? I won’t be leaving the house. The one thing I’ve promised myself is that Saturday is my day to stay home, rest, and catch up on things that didn’t get done because I had to *leave* the house to do rideshare and errands and such. (The only exception is if I’m visiting family or there’s something special going on.) But I’m still trying to do the planning and learning and housework (oh my). And I do want to make an actual supper tonight, but I’ve already got that organized and just need to actually put things in a pot and cook them later.

I’ve always had issues with organization, time management, etc. When I was growing up, and even in my early years as an adult trying to hold down a full-time teaching job, I was told that I was lazy, that I could do it if I wanted to, that I needed to “try harder,” that I obviously just didn’t care about getting things done properly. None of which was true, but in those days–that makes me sound old, but then I realize that “those days” were actually over three decades ago, so maybe I *am* old–not as much was known about autism and ADHD and CPTSD and other things that alter the way someone’s brain works and processes. I’m realizing through my kids’ experiences that all the things I was condemned and insulted and bullied about, and all the things that made holding a job effectively so much harder for me than it appeared for other people, weren’t laziness or lack of caring or lack of trying. They were because my brain is not wired like the brains of the people who were saying those things to me.

When I was teaching, after a little trial and error, I found an organizational system that worked for ME, for the way MY brain works and processes. (I also found a principal who bitched at me for using my system instead of doing things the way she wanted me to, even though my way ensured that I was the most effective teacher for my students and their parents and that all the paperwork and lesson plans were actually being completed; that job didn’t last long.) In my personal life, my writing life, etc., I’ve had to do similar trial-and-error things to find out what works for me, instead of getting hung up on what other people say *should* work for me. Things like folding and sorting each item of clothing as I remove it from the dryer, instead of yanking it all out of the dryer and into the basket, then having to fold it later. Or color-coding the stages of my writing projects so I can see at a quick glance where I am with which book.

But it does take trial and error, and when I add a new thing, or entire new set of things, to the table, as I’m doing now with the planning and learning about writing and marketing and such, sometimes my inner executive stops functioning. And I’ve learned to be kind to myself when that happens, because I know *now* (at age 54) that that doesn’t happen because I’m lazy or don’t want to do it, it’s because my brain is wired differently and sometimes needs a break or a different approach.

At least takeout food is a thing…

This Week Is Hectic!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

This is a hectic week, but hectic in a good way.

Thursday is the official release day for A Fighting Chance! I put this book up for Kindle preorder on April 26, and on May 9 it will release for Kindle and paperback.

I’ve been making some tweaks to my release schedule going forward. Take Some Tahini (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 6) will release in July as scheduled; after that, my next release will be in October of this year. I’ve discovered, in trying to do 6 releases this year, that that pace isn’t exactly sustainable for me, especially since I’ll also be releasing some young adult fiction (under my Jo Ramsey pen name) starting in 2025. So I’m lowering that plan by one book for 2024, and will be releasing five books instead of six, and for 2025 I’m planning four releases. There might be an extra short story or two released over those couple of years, but I’m not currently *planning* those. So another part of the hecticness of this week is rearranging my release schedule and, by extension, my writing and editing schedule.

And I’m getting ready to take a trip to watch my younger kid graduate from veterinary school next week! Packing and coordinating travel plans with the others who are going is one of the most hectic things, but it is so amazingly worth it to watch my kid’s dream–almost literally a lifelong dream, they’ve wanted to be a veterinarian since they were about three years old–come true.

So that’s where I’m at this week. I’m also continuing to plan “wide” releases of my books (making them available through retailers in addition to Amazon) but have hit a minor snag with some of the existing books that is delaying getting those put out through other vendors. I am continuing to work on it.

Um… Oops… Lost Track of Time…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

A few weeks ago, I posted that I would be moving to a new apartment. That was happening in the middle of my husband and me both having and recovering from norovirus, me recovering from minor surgery, and me trying to release and promote Hooch and Howls.

Dang, March was a long month!

We are now mostly settled in our new apartment. I’m still waiting for hubby to purchase the kitchen island/cart/counter/whatever he promised, which he says might happen tomorrow. I also need to buy a new chair or two for the living room, which will happen… um, eventually.

But meanwhile, we’re here. A much quieter, larger, brighter apartment, with pretty much everything that’s here so far in its place. We have our own washer and dryer, which is incredible luxury after almost seven years of sharing two washing machines with 6 other units, and sharing a dryer with two of those other units. I recovered from norovirus only to have a reaction to a new antidepressant I was on (which I’ve since been weaned off), followed by catching a bad cold which, at least, was only a cold.

But on the plus side, in addition to getting through the move, I released Hooch and Howls on schedule, and it’s gotten a 4-star review! I’m feeling much better physically now, and hoping that I’ve gotten all of my illnesses for 2024 out of the way already so I can have a peaceful, healthy remainder of the year. We had a snowstorm on Wednesday and Thursday, but the snow from that has melted.

I hope y’all are doing well. Here’s a picture of part of the living room of the new place:

May be an image of grandfather clock and indoors

I’m Moving!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

In three days, I’m moving to a new apartment. This is a good thing; the new place is larger, quieter, and in a much safer area than where I’m currently living.

But it is putting a bit of a cramp in my writing and promoting. Especially since in TWO days, Hooch and Howls officially releases!

I’m looking forward to being in the new apartment and having quiet, sunlit space to write and create. Moving is stressful, but it ultimately ends up being a good thing. I’ll share pictures of the new space once we’re settled a bit!

Meanwhile, Hooch and Howls is available for preorder through various retailers, and will release on Thursday (the 14th) in digital and paperback formats. https://books2read.com/hoochandhowls

Random Stuff

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I really stink at blog post titles.

Tempeh for Two has been out for almost two weeks now, and I’m so excited to see people buying not only this book but the previous books in the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series! Also, Tempeh has gotten a couple of really good reviews, which I need to remember to add to this website.

I’m doing a random stuff post because I’m dealing with some personal life things that are taking my time, focus, and mental bandwidth. Without going into a lot of detail, if you’re someone who does energy, or prayer, or anything along those lines, I’d appreciate some going toward my 77-year-old father, and some going toward me and my kid and son-in-law who are trying to help my father.

Since finishing writing Ebb and Flow (which may turn out to be the first book of a new series, a spin-off from Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat) and releasing Tempeh, I’ve taken a short break from doing Karenna stuff to work on some young adult fiction. From 2010-2017, I had several young adult novels published under the pen name of Jo Ramsey. From 2005-2010, I wrote 40 YA novels, some of which were among those published, and which form one long series broken into three “branches,” and a separate but connected shorter series. I’m currently going through all 40 of those books to see whether I can–and want to–rewrite, update, and edit them to eventually self-publish. It’s work, but it’s been fun work, and it’s helped keep me together through dealing with the aforementioned personal life stuff.

Hopefully next week I’ll have an update about my March release. I’m not entirely sure if the book I was planning to release in March, A Fighting Chance (follow up to Chance Met) will be ready, but I have another book that will definitely be ready for March if A Fighting Chance isn’t. So stay tuned!

Tough Time of Year

Posted on by karennacolcroft

At this time of year, a lot of people post about how wonderful the holidays are. They fill Facebook and other social media with pictures of decorations, dinners, family and friends. And for some people, the holidays really are wonderful.

For others, they aren’t. This can be a very difficult time of year for some people, for various reasons. There might be estrangement from family members. Loss of loved ones. Not coping well with the increased amount of darkness for those of us in the northern hemisphere. For all kinds of reasons, this can be a tough time of year.

For me, this year, it’s very tough. I’m not going to go into why, because it isn’t something I want to talk about publicly at this point. I am managing, to some extent. I have some support from people in my life, including my therapist. After the first of the year when things reopen on regular schedules, I’ll be getting additional help to cope with what’s going on. But it’s difficult and painful, and it’s making this season not…something I want to celebrate this year.

I am thankful to my kids and spouse, and to the friends who know the situation who’ve been checking in with me. I am not the person who is most heavily impacted by what’s going on, but I am impacted, and it helps to have that validated.

I’m also thankful to the people who have no idea what’s going on and don’t even know me, who are bringing me bits of joy. Someone bought a copy of one of my nonfiction channeling books (written as River Lightbearer). Someone else bought a copy of one of my children’s fiction books (written as Kim Ramsey-Winkler). Someone emailed me in response to my announcement of the Tempeh for Two release date telling me how much she loves the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series and that she can’t wait for this next book.

At this time of year, to those of you for whom it truly is a wonderful time of year, I’m sincerely happy for you, and I hope you cherish what you have. For those who are struggling, be kind to yourselves. Don’t force the “holiday cheer” if it isn’t there for you. Honor how you feel and what you need. And for everyone: Remember that you don’t know what someone else is dealing with. Be compassionate, and don’t underestimate the power of what seems like a tiny gesture.

Yule (Winter Solstice) is imminent here in the northern hemisphere. Darkness will begin to ebb; light will become more prevalent. And hopefully things will become easier.