My characters kill people so I don't have to.
See? I told you the book would come out eventually!
I don’t think you need a blurb or anything at this point. Mark August 9, 2016 on your calendar.
Kindle US
Kindle UK
Kindle CA
Kobo
Nook
iBookstore
It’ll be elsewhere, like direct, upon release, and in paperback around the same time.
First round of Oblivion revisions are underway in between freelance stuff. Hopefully I survive.
Toward the end of next month, I hope to have Solomon’s Seal up for pre-order as well along with a cover reveal.
State of the Union time, boys and ghouls.
I squirreled away my pennies so I could take April off to focus on Oblivion. Of course that’s gone about as well as expected, but I anticipate finishing a very bare bones zero draft by the end of next week. It’s going to need a lot of fleshing out (like, I’m 70% through it and I’ve skipped about 10K worth of scenes), which I hope to do throughout May, and I’ll need to schedule time with my beta and copyeditor, but I’m looking to release it late this summer.
When it’s done, I have to finish a for-pay project, but then I’ll likely be working on Zheng’s Tomb, which I’m about 13K words into. I’m also playing with a fun comedic crime novel called Trix Moody that I’ll tell you about sometime if it ever actually goes anywhere.
Obv. More below.
As I’ve been hinting for a few months now (and previously told Patrons of Snark), September 20 will see the release of the first in a new series: Solomon’s Seal.
For the Livi Talbot books, think Tomb Raider meets Gilmore Girls in a mix of urban fantasy and adventure. SS will be up for pre-order in June. The cover is done but I’m awaiting the review quote for the front before previewing it along with rewriting the jacket copy, so look for that stuff later this summer when I have time to poke at it.
I’ll go into more detail about the series later, as right now I want to keep the focus gearing up for Oblivion, but atm I’ll say the Livi Talbot series is nine to ten books. At this point, I’m going to commit to publishing the first three. Other than something brief in the first one, there are no cliffhangers, so I won’t leave anyone hanging if my stress level gets too high and I decide to stop publishing them. (If sales are poor and piracy is high, I don’t want to quit with a cliffhanger and leave readers frustrated.) So three books to see how they do, each book with a resolution and nothing hanging. Beyond that, we’ll see. The goal is to release them three to six months apart–I have a workable third draft of Odin’s Spear done as a follow up to Solomon’s Seal that just needs a bit more smoothing out.
For Wolfe, it’s moved to next year. It was either work on those rewrites or work on Oblivion, and so I put it off. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
The novella Haunted is also backburnered. I just have too much on my plate with my books, for-pay writing projects, and re-releasing Aunt Judy’s books. I’ll see if I have time to rewrite it next year.
I also wanted to finish Heaven’s Choice, the prequel novella, before Oblivion but I’ve had to backburner it too. It was getting really long–Heaven’s quite a talker, probably as punishment for killing her–and I might save it for later when I feel like revisiting the series. If that changes, I’ll let everyone know.
Now for the questions…
Release date? August 2016 (tentatively)
Pre-order? May or June
Availability? Everywhere ebooks are sold: Kindle, Kobo, Nook, iBooks, GooglePlay, ARe/Omnit Lit, direct, Smashwords, etc. Paperback on Amazon.
Length? About 90K words when all is said and done (around the length of Bloodlines).
Narrators? Peri and Mishka primarily. There are brief one-shots between Peri and Mishka’s sections featuring the other characters so most fan favourites get some “screen” time.
Is this the last book? Yes. No, it wasn’t supposed to be, but I’m done; my heart can’t take having another Zara book pirated given how much she means to me. I am actually looking forward to writing the next arc of books just for me. I might put them out in paperback eventually, I don’t know–the cost of stock and editing might be more than I can invest. For all intents and purposes, though, this is it.
Happily ever after? Oh AHAHAHA, sweetheart. I am not the writer for you if HEAs are requisite for your reading material. There’s closure to the arc, however it’s a painful book on a lot of levels and I expect it to get some hate.
But Zara and Nate— No, just don’t even with me. I’m not a romance writer. They are not the focus of the plot.
Additional short story at the end? Nope. I always used those to set up future books in the series. That would just be cruel this time.
Deleted scenes? I had to rewrite so much early on, yes, there’ll likely be some. I’ll post them at www.zaralain.com when the book releases. There were a few Peri scenes cut from the beginning that I loved but couldn’t use anymore.
Can I have a review copy? No. I am not touring or offering books for review or anything else, the stress is not good for me. People who took previous books didn’t bother with the fourth one and hated the third, so I’m certainly not handing out the fifth. It’ll be $4.99 in ebook or $11.49 in print, like the others. Some Patrons of Snark get ARCs. If you read it and enjoy it, and want to leave a review, I thank you. But I don’t have the spoons for pursuing reviews.
Will you have signed copies in your online shop? Yep!
Who dies? Everyone!*
Can I catch previews or excerpts? I’ve posted some for Patrons of Snark (and owe them another this month) and members of Alchemy Red on Facebook can sometimes catch others.
Does it have a soundtrack? Yep! I’ll be resuming Soundtrack Sunday with both Oblivion and Solomon’s Seal later. For now, here are my top four Oblivion tunes on repeat:
So that’s it for now. Hopefully some pre-order links next month–I’ll post when it’s all settled. Back to writing this damn book now.
*Not everyone. Probably.
So here’s a heads-up for regular readers (all three of you) and the sitch in a nutshell.
Six weeks ago I was notified by my host–where I have been for several years without a problem–that there was a huge spike in resource usage and I had to fix it, with no direction how to do so. Every forty-eight hours, the same message, just boilerplate responses and nothing I was doing seemed to be working.
Eventually, after a lot of arguing and bullshit and threats, I seemed to be handed off to a far more helpful tech, but I still have to do all this shit on my own and it doesn’t seem to be working. My legit website traffic is just a handful of people, not enough to be causing this CPU usage, which I guess points to bots/crawlers/etc. I have a few queries in about it, and I’m hoping to try CloudFlare, but I’m doubtful at this point that anything will come of it.
My stuff is backed up, at least. Indigo Chick Designs is hosted separately right here, which is about all I care about since it’s the bulk of my income right now.
I’ve disabled various plugins, like my online shop. For now, if you want to buy ebooks direct, you can head here. If for some reason you want to buy a signed print copy of River for someone for Christmas, drop me a line about it–you can pay through PayPal.
I’ve also switched to a simpler theme I’m hoping will load a little faster, which is why things look different.
I’ve already deleted the Soulless serial database, and I will likely be deleting others, like Children of the Apocalypse and Curio Killed the Cat. I’ll add the complete PDF files for CotA 1 & 2 and CKtC here for download. The serials still get a lot of traffic but there’s been virtually no crossover between freebie readers and paying customers anyway (sorry, y’all, but it’s true) and I’m hoping if I basically just torch everything non-essential, that might bring things down enough.
If not, well…
I’m paid up with my host until September and I can’t afford to move right now. And the fact is, the whole situation isn’t good for my health.
I’ve gone weeks without sleeping, I’ve had to take meds for my anxiety often a couple of days in a row (when normally I break down and take it once a month), and I know this is going to make me sick again if it keeps up. I have a huge lull in freelance work right now so I was hoping to get some writing done, and instead I have spent all my time for the past week learning Tech Speak and trying to understand .htaccess and caches and crawlers and all this shit without much luck.
So in another week or so, I guess the site might be gone?
It stressed me out for a while. Now? Meh. Again, my traffic is low anyway, and a good half those “legit” people are pirates. Maybe I can get my domain to point at just a list of my books or something in the meantime. But I’ve already been in a debilitating depressive episode for eight months, I am a mess of tears and doom-spirals daily already. I don’t need this bullshit; it’s just a website and not worth me getting sick over.
If this comes to pass (IF!), it might be months before things are back again, so if you’re worried about missing a book release (AHAHAHA), I’ve got two different newsletters you can sign up for, which I’ll post below.
For sure, I’ll see you on Twitter, and can try to catch up on Facebook more, ‘kay? (Also, fan-types, you can join Alchemy Red and talk with me, too.)
So as FB and Twitter followers know, I’ve been poking at Oblivion. I’m about a quarter of the way through. Sometimes pages fly by, other times I have to pluck each and every word from my brain (it’s as painful as it sounds). The structure’s worked out, though, and the big tent pole moments have mostly been figured out, and I know how it ends. I’m also ensuring even Ryann and Zara get small sections, so everyone gets their moment with the reader, and a solid epilogue.*
A couple of brief teasers have been posted at Alchemy Red–it’s a closed group but anyone’s free to join, so please check it out if you’re so inclined and would like to connect with other readers.
I’ve also just posted a couple of chapters (about fourteen pages) for Patrons of Snark, if you want to catch up with Mishka and get a peek at Oblivion. I’ll look at posting more snippets there as I can (in lieu of working on Amends right now).
There is also the ZaraLain.com domain I finally have running as a series hub. It’s still in progress and I’ll be adding some desktop wallpaper featuring the cover art and that. If you think of anything else I should add, just let me know.
I know some of you have been waiting for this book for three years now. I’m sorry for the delay but I’m hoping the kinks are worked out and this will happen tentatively next spring. Once a draft is complete and I’ve worked out a schedule with my beta and my copyeditor, I’ll set a date and get the book up for pre-order. I’m also looking at finishing Heaven’s Choice and releasing that a little ahead of time to lead into Oblivion.
I appreciate your patience and understanding, and for not yelling at me, and hope to hell I can pull this damn book off.
* I was going to warn that I am not even trying to make this book easy to follow if you’ve skipped the other books, but I’m pretty sure anyone who skipped Hunter/Lineage isn’t reading for the plot and won’t bother with the series conclusion anyway. For loyal readers, though, I’m hoping Zara and Nate will have at least a single moment appropriate for them and the story as thanks for sticking with the series.
Yesterday and today were a busy few days at Chez Skyla’s–instead of scrambling to hold onto the ledge at the end of this month financially, I have a little extra to play with (shifting me from Crushing Poverty to Able-to-Breathe-a-Little-as-Long-as-I-Don’t-Move-Too-Much Poverty), so I promptly went out and bought new cleaning supplies and have been mopping floors and scrubbing the tub and cleaning the cupboards and and and–
Yes, I realize this makes me a grownup now, and it is UTTERLY TERRIFYING.
*
So I sat down the other day and made a list of everything I want to write this year, both my stuff and for-pay writing projects.
It was…lengthy.
So from there I broke it down to what I NEED to write, starting with for-pay writing at the top (because PAY, duh), then the Skyla projects I’m committed to, both for Readers and My Own Happiness.
“It’s doable!” I thought. “I got this!”
Then my brain did this little rewind thing, and I actually wrote down the first draft projected word counts of everything. Which changed it all a bit.
In a good year, I can write about 450-500K words. If I push it beyond that, my brain burns out. Literally. I will sit there and words do not come out. So that right there is a limitation. And with everything coming up this year personally, my more comfortable target is going to be 350-400K. I’ve already written about 150K words the past couple of months, which gives me maybe 250K more to play with, if I take care of myself.
Right off the bat, 100K of that goes to for-pay writing. So I have another 100-150K to play with. 75K for Wolfe comes out of that. So, max, I have another 75K to play with, a chunk of which will go to Amends since that funded.
Then I blinked up at my list and made a little sad face.
This is exceptionally hard for me but it actually took a physical illness and worrying about my health to accept: I have limitations. Real, actual ones. The primary reason I have trouble accepting this is due to mental illness–a large part of my disorder insists there are no limitations! I can do everything! I don’t need sleep! I don’t need rest! I am magical! To carry the spoon metaphor over to this, my brain chemistry actually makes me genuinely overestimate the number of spoons I have available and it takes dropping dead of exhaustion to realize I’ve done so.
It’s why this year I’ve had to be careful about time commitments, being clear about work commitments (little by little, I’ve been extending my turn around times for clients–hospital visits and rest days have eaten into a chunk of my time), and now accepting writing limitations means fewer of those commitments too.
Since y’all paid for Wolfe last year with the River campaign, it gets top priority. Which likely means bumping Oblivion to early next year at the earliest. This pisses me off to no end because I want nothing more than for the series to be done with and no longer plaguing me, but it’s going to take a tremendous amount of mental, emotional, and physical energy, because I refuse to end the series with a half-assed book.
And so it waits.
It also means I probably won’t finish another Livi book this year. EXTRA SAD FACE.
*
Also in book news, you can get the Demons of Oblivion Bundle–that’s three novels plus short stories–for 30% off at Kobo this weekend by entering the code GET30 at checkout. Next month, there is going to be a 99c sale for Bloodlines to celebrate Patreon reaching the Amends milestone, and I’d appreciate it if y’all could spread the word then. (I’ll remind you with next week’s quarterly book state of the union.)
Finally, I am a little…irritated that the dumb bint responsible for this is after Damaged now too (which has not been posted, and I’ll admit I have Theories as to who posted Exhumed back then, though insufficient evidence). And you know what? Fuck that. I do not have the energy to police the illegal downloads of this book as well, so it’s coming down from sale everywhere but my site (where I will have your real name and absolutely will come after you if you post it for illegal download). I am also going to do a print edition of the book this weekend so at least I’ll keep all those lovely reviews you guys posted on Amazon, which meant a lot to me.
“But Skyla, you’re punishing all the legit readers–”
Listen, I wrote Damaged for my friend Danni’s birthday. I almost didn’t make it for sale elsewhere because it was a story for HER, not a story for some cheap bitch who enjoys violating me.
It’s not a huge seller so, like 9 Crimes and Dial V for Vampire, if you want it, you can get it here.
But I do not have the energy for people’s fuckery, and if it saves me some spoons, I absolutely will take my toys and go home. There are limitations on my physical and mental health, and I will do what I have to in order to protect that, including making it more difficult for people to steal from me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a refrigerator to scrub.
Writer of urban fantasy, thrillers/mysteries, and horror.
Fifth-generation crazy cat lady. Bitchy feminist.
So tired all the goddamn time.
My characters kill people so I don’t have to.