What a surprising year for productivity.

Second in isolation for me and I was sicker this year than I have been in seven years with an autoimmune disease flare-up and falling through the cracks of healthcare. Wild to me that I then got so much done the past six months, but I cobbled together some duct tape for my body, so the equation seemed to be:

One part expired corticosteroids plus two parts isolation plus two parts Patreon support equals…a bunch of books written.

But first, let’s start with what released this year.

What Released:

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The long-awaited fifth Livi Talbot novel, Yampellec’s Idol, kicked my ass hard to revise this year, but I got it out in the world at last and I’m super proud of it. I started this book in 2018, got a chunk done in 2019, “finished” it in 2020, but 2021 I took several months trying to revise and fix it. I know it was divisive but I am tremendously proud of it and thank everyone who got this far on the journey with Livi and me.

I also finished what started as a fun short story for patrons and became a prequel novella about Elis O’Connor, Season of the Bitch, which is now out in paperback (ebook is up for patrons only). I’m really excited about this one because it unexpectedly filled in some backstory pieces involving Zara and involved Elis murdering people.

I also was invited to a boxset anthology of female fantasy writers, so Solomon’s Seal reached some new readers in the Magic & Mystery boxset.

What Was Written:

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SIX WHOLE BOOKS.

Okay, three were already in progress, but still!

• Witch Hunt (Elis O’Connor #2), which is still posting at Patreon and will conclude in February
• Dweller on the Threshold (standalone), which will come out in April 2022
• Watcher in the Woods (standalone, though same world as Dweller), which is not scheduled yet
• Charon’s Gold (Livi Talbot #6), which will come out in October 2022
• The Killing Beach (Waverly Jones #1), scheduled for spring 2023
• A Wild Kind of Darkness (Waverly Jones #2), scheduled for spring 2024*

So many books!

Every time I updated the little word count ticker for something, I got a little more excited, and I’ve left them there in the sidebar because it pleases me to see some tangible things I’ve done.

Additional stories were produced for Patreon–specifically two West POV ones set during Yampellec’s Idol, one of which gave me an idea of a West story to write and serialize next year.

On the Blog…

My top posts were:

• The Death of Livi Talbot (announcing the series end)
• Deserving Better (on how our heroines deserve better than what we get IRL and also This Is Not Paranormal Romance)
• The Pandemic Was/Is Hard on Creatives. Be Kind. (aka stop yelling at and/or mocking us about how little we’ve been producing)
• A Very Special Caturday (Shawn’s second birthday)

Closing Out the Year

I’ve also started the third Waverly Jones Mystery, Alone at Night, as you can see here–amazing that I spent nearly four years trying to write the first book and now suddenly all I want to do is play in this world day and night.

All this is definitely not going to continue on into the new year–I might get some writing done in the next couple of weeks but nowhere near that. I’m off the last of the meds I had to temporarily keep my immune system in check and everything is…getting very unpleasant and painful again, interrupting me every forty minutes or so. But I am so glad I had, at least temporarily, a productive time writing.

Shawnie is presently recovering from his dental surgery yesterday–they took NINE teeth!–and I’m pretty exhausted from the stress, but I have a bunch of presents wrapped under the tree I got myself and I’m closing out the year as Lady Skyla Dawn Cameron, having bought a plot of land in Scotland which gives me the title of ladyship per historical Scottish tradition (okay so it actually planted a tree, but it makes me giggle to be called Lady Skyla). Year two of the pandemic, but it could be–and has been–worse, so I’m grateful for what I have.

Happiest of holidays and I hope you’ll join me for what I’ve got in store in 2022!

*Optimistic of me to think I’ll be alive in 2024 lol.

(Light spoilers for Yampellec’s Idol with this one–y’all know how I feel about spoilers, so I promise they don’t reveal details and I will not approve any comments that spoil the books further. But skip if you’re not up to date on the series.)

Y’all know how much I love the show Psych–I named my kittens Shawn and Gus after all. I think I’ve seen it all the way through five or six times–all eight seasons*.

There are certainly things that didn’t land well the first time, let alone age well–mainly the transphobia, which always bothered me, but at least was relegated to maybe three or four instances so can be skipped/ignored. Usually, the show stuck the landing.

Except in one rather significant area: how it handled Juliet and the aftermath of Shawn’s betrayal, when she learned he had lied to her for years about being a psychic.

At first, things seemed to be progressing well. There was the episode where Shawn considered two paths–the real one, with the truth known, and another, where he continued to lie to Juliet. And at the very end, when she confronts him, and he says “If I’d just done this differently, you wouldn’t know and we’d still be happy” she is furious. And I thought, Oh, the writers know what they’re doing–he can’t be that oblivious. He’ll apologize. He’ll right a wrong. Juliet has been betrayed, she deserves better.

Then…nothing happened.

There were a handful of episodes of tension when she moved out and they struggled to get along. And then along came an episode where Shawn is woken by Gus in the middle of the night and Juliet is just…right there, asleep next to him.

Shawn never properly apologized.

Shawn never worked to regain her trust.

Shawn never actively made amends or showed he’d grown to realize lying to the woman you love is fucking wrong.

And Juliet…just went along with it.

Reader, that has never not pissed me off.

It made me think less of Shawn as a character, of Juliet as a character, and, quite frankly, of the writers themselves for making these choices.

Juliet deserved better.

All of our heroines deserve better.

I have read book after book, seen show after show (looking at you, my beloved trash PLL), watched movie after movie, in which men betray women and irreparably cause them harm and…there are no consequences. The heroine, after her initial anger, forgives him. Maybe after a big gesture. Maybe not.

What the ever-loving fuck.

It’s honestly at the point where sometimes I wonder if I am completely fucking crazy here, though a friend reminded me that the reason Mr. Darcy has endured as a hero for two hundred years is that he takes the deserved dressing-down from the heroine and fixes his shit. He doesn’t even intend for her to know what he does for her family–he does it because it’s the right thing to do, because he realized he was guilty of the things she accused him of. He wants to do better.

Lizzie Bennett knew her worth.

What about the rest of us?

I am not my characters, but I like to see them as my friends.

I root for them. I hurt for them. I get angry for them. I wish I could fix their flaws for them. I want them to be happy.

And like any good friend, I don’t want to see my heroines compromise themselves for men who are acting shitty.

I admit I am…genuinely baffled by the people–women!–who have said to me directly that they don’t understand why Livi would not forgive West at the end of Yampellec’s Idol. To the point where I’m wondering if I’m just a really shitty writer for it being unclear?

This is a man who did not do the bare fucking minimum of even apologizing to her.**

Why would I have her forgive that? How could I write a multi-book journey with this woman and see all she’s been through, all her insecurities, all she’s endured (she is a fucking rape victim!), and have her to accept back a man betrayed her to the degree he did?

And I say this as someone who loves West! He’s my favourite character. But boy done fucked up and, as a writer, I do not reward that kind of behaviour. It doesn’t matter that he self-sabotages–and knows it. It doesn’t matter how he feels. It matters what he’s done.

Livi deserves better.

Women deserve better.

This is not unique to Livi!

Zara Lain, both in Oblivion and the post-Oblivion stories (Dial V, Counterpoint) makes it abundantly clear that she still loves Nate more than anything, but both of them need to work their individual shit out AND that they deserve better than one another the way things are currently. This is not me being obtuse as a writer–this is knowing how deeply damaged these people are, and that they (at least, at the time thought) have centuries to figure it out and do it right.

The more issues you give your characters, the heavier their baggage, the more work you have to put in as a writer to show them doing the work of sorting their shit out.

Also?

I, for one, liked to see glimmers of happiness for Livi in the most recent book. I liked that, for a little while, she got to be with a man who made her feel safe. Who initiated conversations with her about consent and boundaries, who wanted to ensure he didn’t hurt her. When she was going through hell, that’s what she needed, and while I think I ultimately deleted the conversation in edits, there was a point where Pru said that to her too. It doesn’t need to be the love the century for it to still be good for her.

Someone said to me on Twitter a little while ago that why she absolutely trusts me with this series is because Richard was as much of a toxic asshole as she called from the moment she saw him. Because so often heroines in books go all heart-eyes over those types of men and they end up being viable love interests.

I planted those red flags intentionally with that character, because I too have read those sorts of books and it drives me nuts when these obvious douchebags are glossed over.

And although they’re different, there are also BRIGHT RED FLAGS with West as well. Glaring crimson, the size of billboards. He has repeatedly waved them in front of Livi’s face.

So when the truth of it is before her…Livi chooses herself.

She puts herself first. She will not compromise herself. And if she had, at this point in the series, attempted for forgive that betrayal, that would’ve ended spectacularly badly because I know West and he is going to fuck up again and again and again. He hasn’t learned a fucking thing.

Of course that choice hurts. I’d love for it to be easy, but we all know it isn’t. It sucks and it hurts and I wish circumstances were different.

It’s still the right choice.

My heroines will choose to be alone before they accept less than they deserve–I’ve seen enough compromising in real life, thank you.

This is, after all, The Livi Talbot Series. It’s right there in the name–this is about her journey and always will be.

I am an urban fantasy and thriller writer. This means, among other things, I am very unlikely to ever guarantee a romantic HEA in anything I write***–that doesn’t mean some books won’t have it but, I mean, have you met me? (There is a reason I don’t write erotic romance anymore!)

But what I can guarantee, 100% every time, are two things:

1. I won’t kill pets, even via old age or off page.
2. I am aware of red flags among shitty men and they never get off consequence-free with my heroines. ****

That is the kind of writer I aspire to be: the kind you can trust not to idealize toxic relationships or abusive behaviour. That when you read something of mine and you start thinking 🚩🚩🚩…at least you know I’m aware of it too and I’m going to do something about it (probably involving murder). My stories will hurt, and they will be dark, but I will never betray you in that regard.

Love does not heal men who betray. No one has a magic vagina that zaps the lying sack of shit out of them.

People get better by doing the work. Until such a time? My heroines come first.

Because they deserve better.

If you, too, like heroines who come into their own and decide take the step to put themselves first, let me introduce you to my girl Lizzie Grace.

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* Although I haven’t seen it since Gus died.

** TBH I don’t remember–I don’t think he did, but after knowing people are currently reading that book having stolen from me, given how much that book means to me, I am literally queasy at the thought of looking up those final scenes to refresh my memory.

*** Particularly not when I can’t complete a series as intended.

***** There is, in fact, an excellent chance of them being murdered!

Yesterday was November 30, which was the last day of NaNoWriMo. And yes, I finished my novel weeks ago but I wanted all the NaNo badges, which included writing every day and achieving par every day, so I pulled out the second Waverly Jones book, which I’d started in September after finishing the first one–I had 19K written and I gave myself a modest goal of another 30K by the end of the month.

Then last night I kind of sort of finished it–it came in at 88K and change.

So in the month of November I wrote 152 000 (and change) words. That’s the NaNo goal times three.

And I got all my badges!

I honestly did not think I’d finish the book and I even doubted I’d get the last two writing badges after the weekend I had because the moment those books popped up for download, again, it was like something just shut off in my brain. I couldn’t type in the document. I thankfully already got my words in for the day because I walked away in the middle of a paragraph and it was well over twenty-four hours before I could make words again (and those were pulled out with pliers).

I cannot describe it any way other than paralyzing. And honestly if not for NaNo and my completionist need to get those last two badges, I don’t think I would’ve made myself get back on the horse right away. It’s why Livi 5 took so damn long–I completely FREEZE.

(Again, do I need professional help? Probably! But therapy? In this economy???)

But it took another two days of steady writing at night and things were moving again, and yesterday I flipped my freelance/writing scheduled days so I could focus entirely on finishing the book. I wrote 13K and was done after 11pm.

Tacking on the 45K I wrote to finish Livi 6 in October, I’ve basically written 200K words in five weeks. On top of 30 hours a week freelancing.

I physically feel like I am about to fall apart. My entire body aches. I’ve been wearing a wrist brace all month. So whenever you see my crazy high word counts, remember there is an enormous physical toll because I’m an old lady approaching forty, and I can also do this because this is literally all I have. I’m in year two of lockdown with my health compromised and no one in my social bubble because no one will make the same sacrifices to do so. I don’t have hobbies, I don’t socialize beyond weekly DnD and Saturday write-ins (if that counts as “social”?). I have the imaginary people in my head and my cats. That’s it.

But that’s six books I’ve finished in six months and I’m really proud of that. I’ve actually reconnected and re-fallen in love with writing again, and while the rough drafts I’ve finished are all pretty messy, I am really happy I did them. I’ve got a lot of work of revision ahead of me but that’s something I can pick at next year when my health is rougher again.

The book I just finished is A Wild Kind of Darkness, and it’s probably not going to release until spring 2024, but after The Killing Beach took me three and a half years to write, I was so happy the sequel moved so smoothly.

I can’t wait for y’all to meet Waverly.

She’s misanthropic. She’s anxious. She talks to the hallucination of her dead sister. She keeps accidentally rescuing strays. She has Resting Sociopath Face. She has a complicated relationship with her two mothers. She’s both coolly detached and deeply intense. And she has one of my favourite lines: My sexual orientation is Tired of Dealing with Humans So Mostly I Don’t Bother and there’s no pride flag for that.

Waverly gets back to my roots of writing Unlikeable Female Characters and I have so much fun with her. I’m sure reception will be mixed but I’m also sure she’ll have her fans and I’m excited for them to find her.

Since I switched my writing day this week, it’s back to freelancing now through Friday, and I know I’m at the edge of exhaustion so no more raw wordage (except for maybe a for-pay novella I’m nearly done) and just a slow pace starting Livi 6 revisions.

And instead of writing tonight I will probably nap.