“When’s That Book Coming?” Spring 2017 Edition

Hai, I need a less depressing post at the top of my blog feed, so here you go. Onward and upward and all that. Last SotU here if you like.

What’s Recently Released

Resist: A Zara Lain Short Story came out February 1 for my Patrons of Snark.

Contract killer and snarky vampire Zara Lain is hired to assassinate a certain politician with fascist tendencies, and brings her saber-tooth cat Rodney Ballsgalore along for the ride. What they find in the mysterious golden tower owned by their target is bodyguards who aren’t quite human and a monster not that easy to kill.

It is 6300 words of killing fascists and punching nazis. Literally. I’ll be putting it together as a chapbook later in the year for Patrons of Snark and perhaps as contest wins.

You can join Patreon for $2/month to get this and other stories.

Odin’s Spear, the second Livi book, came out on February 7 in ebook and paperback, and can be found everywhere books are sold.

Livi is trying to take a break from things after the events of Solomon’s Seal and a death in the family, but the world of artifact hunting isn’t quite done with her yet. Some off-the-books work for West leads her to an abandoned, underwater city in the Mediterranean in search of the spear of a god capable of starting war. (This is my favourite review of the book and sums it up nicely.)

If you don’t have a copy yet, you can get it one of these places: Kindle US | Kindle UK | Kindle CA | Kobo | Nook | iBookstore | Smashwords | Payhip | Print

What’s Upcoming

Remember last time I mentioned wanting to write something involving a haunting? Well, I finally did, and it ended up being a Livi novella. Set between Odin’s Spear and Zheng’s Tomb, Ashford’s Ghost involves Livi finding something’s not quite right about the new house. Isolated out in the country during a blizzard, she, Pru, West, and Laurel set out to uncover a mysterious presence in her home and put a stop to it before they’re all burned alive.

Four ways to read this one:

1. It’ll be serialized for ALL Patrons of Snark over about three months (four chapters a month).
2. It’ll be available in a duo anthology release with Dina James called Hauntings: Two Tales of the Paranormal, probably June-ish for $4.99.
3. It’ll be a single release in the fall for $2.99 (basically taking the place of Zheng’s Tomb, which won’t be ready yet).
4. You can contribute to the fundraiser Dina Needs Reinforcements–if you kick in $10 or more, you’ll get an e-ARC when it’s done.

The novella’s pretty long–about 38K words, and a bit more might end up added in revisions–so the single might be released in print as well in the fall.

What I’m Working On

Ugh.

I did really well with Zheng’s Tomb for a while, it’s over 24K (of 100K) and missing a couple of scenes that would bump it up some. So I’m saying over a quarter done.

But I hit a wall last night and I know what’s missing–the personal stakes for Livi, aka “The Livi” in a lot of ways–but I don’t quite have it yet. I’m trying to roll it around in my head and figure out what’s going to make it click–I might have to go back and write a few things from other POVs to get it. I haven’t decided whether to put it on hold for a bit or dump it into Scrivener and at least write out the various scenes I do know happen and stitch it together again (of course I did something similar with Odin’s Spear and my god Frankennovel was a headache to revise).

I may have to work on my next for-pay writing project for a bit while I sort out ZT. In the meantime, Livi is on life support and can use all the help she can get to find her audience. Word of mouth of any kind is appreciated.

Two of the things I wrote so far this year weren’t planned–Resist and Ashford’s Ghost–and I have a few novellas in progress I’ve never finished, so I’ll wait and see what else want to be written this year and hopefully have something in the summer. I also have an old romantic comedy zombie novel I’ve never done anything with that I might revise and serialize for Patrons of Snark, but ugh, I’m afraid I’ll get it out and be so horrified by this thing I wrote twelve years ago that I never recover.

Also, TWIN PEAKS IS COMING BACK NEXT MONTH!  <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Very few things make me happy. This definitely does.

So anyway: plz buy stuff and help Dina and I hope you dig the stuff you buy!