Blog — Page 12

Dec 29 2023

Stuff I Liked in 2023

I played some good games, watched some good stuff, read some good books. Here’s a look at a sampling of them.

There is no ranking here, no Top ____. It’s just me talking about things I loved.

keep reading

Dec 18 2023

End of Year Recap and Sales

I’ve been meaning to post (I’ve got a Soundtrack Sunday partially done) but…*gestures*

I’ve still got a handful of people who keep up with me via the blog, though, so here’s proof-of-life–not dead!

I’m working this week, and I should just squeak by for rent and bills and still be able to take next week off. I’m not doing Christmas or anything, I’m too broke and I’m still dodging the plague so I don’t hang out with other people. I do have a pile of gifts to open because I am very lucky and apparently can’t cancel other people’s Christmases. Yet.

My grand plan is to eat cheese and crackers and veggies, and listen to records, and write, and be left alone. I’m going to make sangria which shouldn’t bother my liver too much.

I suppose I should do some kind of year-end thing? A recap? I don’t know, I’m tired.

I did this for Patreon though, and I don’t think I posted it here yet. It’s a reminder that I did a lot this year even though it didn’t feel that way.

“Mystery at Red Fox Lake” wasn’t a traditional release but a thank-you gift for preorders, and I’m still counting it. Three major releases and a paperback of Soul Spell, plus I wrote four whole new books. And then all those Patreon shorts (last one for the year posts the end of this week).

I am really excited for Taiga Ridge next year. I think it’ll appeal to a particular type of reader, but those who are looking for a book like that should be happy with it.

Solomon’s Seal is on for $1.99 at Kobo US/CA and Kindle US ($2.99 CA) until Jan 2. As I was just saying at the Blue Place, my sales are absolutely abysmal this month (even Kobo??? weird!), and in talking about it, several other people said their sales are the same. Maybe everyone will get gift cards for the holidays and spend then, but if you’re so inclined, please consider recommending them in your book circles. The best sales months I had this year were when someone did that at popular blogs (or when Dweller went out in a Kobo VIP email). Those recommendations matter.

To that end, I should go through my own lists of books I’ve read this year and post some recommendations, but I’ll maybe wait and see what I get through next week. Usually current reads are something I post at my Discord server.

I’ve also put ebooks on for 50% off at Payhip, coupon code ENDOFYEAR50 for those who prefer to buy direct.

So, premade covers–between AI and Twitter tanking, I stopped doing them, but engagement at Bluesky is much higher than Twitter’s been in over a year. I haven’t sold any yet, but I’m giving it one last shot. To that end, there’s a final sale until early January, just to see if there’s any life left in that market. Enter the coupon code LASTSALE at checkout (excludes items already on sale, as the old ones are like $30) for 30% off.

That’s kind of it here. I still have to get my last few Christmas cards sent out, and tomorrow and Wed will be work days, and I’ll clear out my inbox for the year. If I don’t get around to posting again, happy holidays whatever you celebrate. Or, at the very least, I hope 2023 doesn’t kick you one final time on its way out.

Nov 24 2023

Obligatory Sales and Such

Good through Monday I’ve got 40% off all ebooks via Payhip with the coupon code SMALLBUSINESS

There are a few novellas and shorts (and I think, now, Soulless?) only available from me direct, and they’re included. (And, as usual, I keep my Deals page updated with current and upcoming sales, so you can always find the best deal.)

I have not gotten back to Beneath the Pines since the medical stuff waylaying me (I’m better, but it definitely took the whole course of antibiotics for it). There are some issues with the structure and foundation of the story (and the fact that it’s 72K and Waverly had just decided to take on another client); I need to take several steps back and retool some things. I still hope to get it done by the end of the year but I’ve switched gears to needed revisions on Alone at Night and I’m hoping that’ll go off for edits next week. I might be able to go back to Waverly after that, though I need some revision to Hell Fire before the last bundles post in Jan and Feb.

I’m positive I had other updates and things to post here but I’ve drawn a blank. Just in case there is anyone looking to collect some of my backlist for a discount, though, I didn’t want to put off the post.

Also, my platonic murder wife is doing her first Book Funnel thing, and you can get the first in her YA paranormal trilogy free by heading here.

Nov 16 2023

Wake up, babe, a new female rage book preorder just dropped…

I am on antibiotics for the first time in nearly thirty years.

I grant that I should have been on something back in 2019 when I’m fairly certain I had strep throat (my fever the first day hit 40.2C aka 104.3F and I was not making good decisions; I am notoriously bad at judging the severity of my own health problems, if it isn’t obvious). But otherwise I just…fight stuff off. An overactive immune system is why I have allergies, why it’s attacking my own body.

That process (at least for the latter) is throttled and, while I intellectually know this, and I know it’s working to keep my body from eating itself, the warnings of “you will be more susceptible to opportunistic infections” didn’t really hit me until Friday, and the walk-in clinic didn’t open until Monday so it was not a fun weekend.

Infections are now going to be a thing, I guess.

I am…not better, and I should be. I don’t know if I need a different antibiotic, if it’s a side effect (I am trying to treat it as such atm), or if it’s some other kind of infection. Every time I think I’m over the worst of *gestures* all this bullshit, something else happens. Finally find out the biosimilar is working? Insurance issues pop up! Get the insurance fixed? Now I’ve got an infection and my box of very expensive cold-chain meds went missing for a goddamn day in transit. I’m exhausted. (And broke; please buy books, I cannot afford the time off to keep going to the walk-in clinic.)

Also, before I get to the book news: please, I am begging you, wear masks. Especially in hospital settings. If you have the slightest tickle in your throat, mask in public. I should not have to be forced to sit in a confined area with coughing children and adults in a medical setting when I need help. There is still a pandemic; there’s an outbreak at my local hospital! You guys are literally killing people.

Anyway.

I hit 100K in fourteen days for November, above is the screenshot from it, and then yesterday I finished the rough barebones draft of the horror book with several more thousand words (this is a lot, even for me, to be doing while working full time but…this is how I manage anxiety and I have a lot of it).

Beneath the Pines (Waverly 7) is nowhere near done yet, despite it currently sitting at 70K, and I’m still going to try to get it done this month. The original plan was to just keep writing words on some other horror books and add to Taiga Ridge’s count because I like getting all the NaNoWriMo badges, and I’m just missing “Write every day on the book in November” and “Hit par every day”.

But I feel like garbage physically, I think mentally I’m crashing, so I don’t know anymore. Even the promise of the dopamine hit of more words is not breaking through the fog.

This does mean, though, that the fall 2024 hole in my schedule is now filled with a new standalone horror book.

It’s been thirteen years since Maya McGlynn set foot in Taiga Ridge Lodge, the twenty-room luxury resort where she grew up. She was simply Maisie, the daughter of the caretakers, and thought of the lodge as her own.

That was when her parents were arrested as serial killers.

It’s been ten years since Maya last had contact with the lodge’s owner, who promised her, upon the conviction of her parents and her whole world forever altering, that she’d always be taken care of.

That was when she changed her name and stopped returning his calls.

It’s been two years since Taiga Ridge Lodge thrived with visitors. Since bookings wavered and rooms were closed off, its halls grew silent, and it never reopened after the pandemic.

That was when she forgot it existed.

Now, Maya has received notice that the owner has passed and, as promised, she is being taken care of: Taiga Ridge Lodge and all its property is hers to dispose of as she sees fit…as soon as she visits her old home to make the final arrangements.

Now, a winter storm approaches, trapping her with restless ghosts, a stray cat, and a single voice on the radio for help.

Now, Taiga Ridge Lodge might not let her go again.

This is a….dark fantasy, slow-burn kind of gothic horror, that is full of rage but also love. It’s kind of like if Dweller was written a little more like The Silent Places but was also a love story, so it’s not super funny. I know some writers are very consistent in their voice from book to book, but I let character dictate that, so sometimes I just will not be funny. My standalone readers tend to be Dweller fans, so…fair warning!

And obviously the cat will be totally fine.

It fits in with what was previously a trio of books that come from the same place in me–Dweller on the Threshold, The Silent Places, and a gothic romance I’m still not done that I will never publish. They’re kind of like fraternal triplets, in that on their own they look very different but all together you can see the same DNA. I wrote a bit about that here at Patreon, writing the same story multiple times. Taiga Ridge makes them quadruplets, I guess.

It’s releasing November 12, 2024

Preorder is now available for eBook: Kindle | Kobo | Nook | iBooks

I am going back to editing now, which at least I can do from bed. Please buy some books and wear a mask.

Nov 07 2023

Release Day: A Wild Kind of Darkness

The second Waverly Jones Mystery is out in the world today, at long last.

This is the last of the six books I wrote/finished in the back half of 2021, if y’all were around then. I was extremely sick with a relapse, taking expired prednisone I had in my cupboard from 2014 to patch me through until I could see a doctor in January, and I just went nuts writing all the things (some hypomania from pred contributed to that). I finished Witch Hunt, wrote Dweller on the Threshold, finished The Killing Beach (at long last), finished Charon’s Gold (at long last), then for NaNoWriMo in November I wrote Watcher of the Woods and A Wild Kind of Darkness.

That buffer has carried me through and given me some breathing room so I wasn’t scrambling to figure out what my next release would be.

Of all the books, Dweller and AWKoD were perhaps the ones I enjoyed the most. The Killing Beach took me four years to write; by contrast, AWKoD just flowed like water. The cold case in the book is based on a real-life unsolved murder from East Gwillimbury, Ontario, which I go into detail about in the behind-the-scenes look in the hardcover edition.

A startling find has altered Waverly Jones’ whole world and given her a reason to stay in her hometown of Port Milton—which means she needs work to pay some bills. So when she’s asked to look into a sixty-year-old double homicide cold case, she takes the job, no matter how unlikely it is to be solved.

Behind decades of rumours and theories—most of them scandalous and unsubstantiated—a portrait of an unconventional woman in a very conventional small town takes form, and the murder baffles even Waverly. The evidence and case files are gone, the leads from sixty years ago were dead ends, and while there is no shortage of suspects and motives, it seems impossible any of the witnesses are still alive—let alone the culprit.

On top of that, the mystery disappearance of the detective she’s been in love with since she was seventeen finally has some answers, but has led to even more questions. What actually befell him eleven years ago? What happened to The Crossroads Butcher?

And will her sister’s body ever be found?

Amazon is very behind with hardcover shipping–I have copies of The Killing Beach in stock at Etsy but not the new one, and if ordering from Amazon yourself, expect a delay. (Out of my hands, I’m sorry.)

I generally take release days off in “celebration” by which I mean I know I need time to do admin things (like newsletters, blog, remind social media I exist, and so on) and I…write. Because writing is my idea of a good time. Plus I’ve got NaNoWriMo, juggling two projects, and I always hit 50K by day seven, so I’m hoping to today as well, just 5K to go though it’s cumulative instead of a single project (although I wanted a 10K day).

It’s 2:30 pm.

I haven’t even gotten to the “remind social media I exist” part yet (other than whining on Bsky).

The past several months in particular have been like the Bride v Crazy 88s scene in Kill Bill. Last week I reached the point where I thought much of the battle was over, and then yesterday it was like O-Ren Ishii showed up and said, “You didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you?”

You know, for a minute there? Yeah, I kinda did.

Who is paying for Skyla’s medication now? We don’t know! Pharmacy needs a thing from insurance. Insurance says it’s not a thing yet. Government won’t pay without the thing. What is going on? I have no idea! But sure, let’s go back to making it complicated, right when I’ve got confirmation it’s working.

I was chasing stuff down last night, the pharmacy woke me early this morning about the delayed shipment, so I have not slept and I’m running on fumes.

Happy release day to me, indeed. Silly rabbit.

I hope you get a chance to pick up and read the new book, and that you enjoy it as much as I do.

The third book, Alone at Night, is also up for preorder: Kindle – Kobo – iBooks – Nook

If you’re a Kobo reader and haven’t picked up the first yet, The Killing Beach is currently part of Kobo’s Mystery BOGO Sale for the month of November. If you need a second title, have you tried Trouble Wore Red? A completely different PI story, totally bonkers, and will leave you grinning (possibly with sympathy knee pain and heartburn if you are over forty like the protagonist).

I’m going to crash for a bit, rest my eyes (if Shawn will stop causing crime; he did not sleep well either and is in full goblin mode), and hope I either check later and find an email from someone telling me what I need to do or that they’ve fixed things, or that I at least feel awake enough to get some words in.