Saturday 30 April 2016

Playlists Galore

I haven't mentioned these on here (I don't think) but I make playlists on8tracks all the time. There's one for Dreamseeker, and one for Shadows of Ourselves. There are also some for writing in general.




You can find them all here: http://8tracks.com/jinx-king

Love Will Remember + SOSAS paperback cover!

Right now I'm uploading the newly revised edition of Souls of Salt & Seawater to Kindle and I just finished creating the paperback cover. It's mostly the same as the old one, with a few tweaks and a new font  and layout. I'm pretty fond of it.

The paperback will be 214 pages, and the paperback of Blood of Midnight will be 239. I have no idea how much they'll cost, but I think roughly around ten dollars. I would make it lower, but, you know, Createspace doesn't roll like that.

I'm listening to old Selena Gomez music. I know Revival like just came out a few months ago, but I need more. Mostly I'm hoping tonight will be productive.

I'm aiming to finish editing Shadows of Ourselves within the next three or four days, along with writing a new collection of vignettes, kind of like Things We Saw at Midnight but. . .not. These ones are light contemporary, with a matched theme and interlocking cast. I'm thinking it will be 3 short stories and six vignettes, or something like that. But I'm not promising this, and I don't know exactly when it would be out if I do write it. I don't know right now if I'll have to wait a bit longer than I want or not, because I have to dive into Dreamwalker and Dreamkiller, and then Maelstrom, if I want to get those all out before the end of the year. I have plenty to keep me busy, at least.

Anyway, work aside, I've been seriously lacking in TV lately. Our streaming box is on the fritz and certain titles and shows just won't load. I have no clue. I just wanna watch new iZombie. I miss when the Magicians was on, and I need more magic boarding school shows stat.

Or Lev Grossman could just write a Magicians spin-off, maybe about Plum, or someone in Fillory, and I would bow to him. That could happen.

Anyway, since I've got nothing important to say I feel like I owe you all a look at the paperback cover for Souls of Salt & Seawater. Here:



Indecision & Purple Hair & Talking Cats

I do not think I'm going to write more Lilac Jones Adventures stories. In fact, I think I'm going to unpublish them. At least on storefronts. The KDP term for those ends May 7th, and I've already unpublished them, so when their enrollment in that ends I'll be posting the first three stories on Wattpad as freebies.

I have more important/meaningful.developed projects to work on and Lilac herself will probably make an appearance in another book someday, so I'm not too worried about any of this.

In more positive news, the paperback designs I'm coming up with (wraparound covers) are very pretty. I like pretty.

Friday 29 April 2016

Too Much and Too Little

While going over SOSAS another time I've been listening to The Walk, by Imogen Heap, on repeat. I've also been stuffing my face with barbecue chips.

But I thought I would take a break from that to post a quote from the book really quickly:


You can buy the book here, or just wait until it's out in paperback. The new edition will have a map of the world in it. If I can figure out how to format that.

Or, you can request a free review copy by sending me an email, which I talked about in my last post. The gist of it is this: you like free books, I like honest reviews. And giving out free books.

So shoot me an email at ApolloBlake@mail.com for a free ebook if you're interested. Now, back to work!

Formatting and ARCS/Review Copies

Today I'm doing some editing and then hopping over to formatting work for paperbacks. I haven't put out any paperbacks yet because, frankly, I'm lazy. But I've had people tell me they want physical copies of the books, and I want them too, so I'm putting them all out through Createspace.

I've used them for paperbacks before, back when I wrote my first book, at seventeen (a novel that nobody but me is ever allowed to see, that will never see the light of day, because that's just how bad it was) and liked the finished product. So.

I'm making SOSAS my priority, and Rage and Frenzy will both be available only in the bundle edition because on their own I think they'd make too-small, floppy books. Plus they're better when read together.

I think I'm personally most excited for the Blood of Midnight paperback, though. It's going to contain Scars of Dusk, the short story, in the paperback edition, and I can't wait to see them in person. I have a feeling that cover is gonna be super pretty.

Aside from formatting paperbacks, though, I'm also looking to send out some review copies of the ebooks.

Particularly for Dreamseeker:


Dreamseeker is a novella I wrote with teenagers hunting monsters, kissing, and travelling to other worlds! It's urban fantasy with sci-fi elements, and here's a quote:

“I’m always going to be there to help you fight, Hugh.” Why were we whispering? Why was he so close? Why—

Whyishetouchingmelikethis?

Hugh’s fingers were tracing the bare skin of my forearms, fingertips smoothing over the cold of the room and destroying every thought that passed through my head. There was just the heat of him, the thrill of his touch that never got old.

“I know,” he said. “I know you will.”

So, there you have it. Romance and terrifying monsters! Plus, that's a pretty cover.

If you're interested in reading Dreamseeker (or any of my published titles!) and leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads, leave a comment below with your email, or email me at ApolloBlake@mail.com, and I'd be happy to send you an ebook of whichever title you're interested in.

Among other things, I'm reworking the Lilac Jones Adventures (going through and giving them a firmer editing, as well as writing another one or two stories to wrap up that series. Originally I was going to write a spin-off novel, called A Darkness So Divine, but the idea for that book was a loose, underdeveloped one, and although I'm probably use those characters someday, that project in and of itself is scrapped. At the same time, I need to end Lilac's story, because I think her stories and fun and cute and because I owe it to anybody who was invested in them.

I'm also giving Souls of Salt & Seawater a firmer editing, but that's honestly just grammar and formatting stuff where I've found tiny errors. Lots and lots of formatting, and it kills me every time.

So, yeah, that's what's up: I'll be posting links to paperbacks within the next week or so, and the new editions of SOSAS and TLJA should be out sometime soon, as well!

I'll probably be doing a rafflecopter giveaway for new Lilac Jones ebooks once they're out, so keep an eyes out for that. And, as always, thanks so much for reading guys!

***

If you like what I have to say and want to see more/stalk me/send me fan & or hate mail, you can find and follow me on Twitter!


It's All Good

Here's a list of some songs I'm listening to while editing:


  • Just One Yesterday by Fall Out Boy
  • Too Much by Pale
  • Jinx by DNCE
  • Mirrors by PVRIS
  • Make a Shadow by Meg Morris

I also have Lemonade playing on repeat, but my favorites are Daddy Lessons, Don't Hurt Yourself, and Six Inch.

It's all good as long as I'm getting work done.

Which, you know, I am. When I'm not reading. I just went through a really big reading slump and I'm starting to get out of it. I just devoured the last Lunar Chronicles book, which pissed me off, because it introduce the first canon gay character of the series as a nameless throwaway who preyed on a straight lead with mind illusions. Not really cool. It was still a great book, though, I just get annoyed at how a lot of straight authors write about us sometimes, especially when they just don't write about us at all, like we don't exist.

On the more positive end of the spectrum, I picked up Cut Both Ways by Carrie Mesrobian again and I'm gonna finish it soon. I bought it a while back because I wanted a book with boys kissing boys, and this had that, plus a really pretty cover.

I have like ten books on the go right now and stacks and stacks of them around my room. I just finished Unchanged by Heather Crews as an ebook and now I'm reading her new book, Pshcopomp, which has been really good so far.

I'm probably going to do an Indie Pick spotlight on that or something, or see if I can interview her for the blog, because I love her work. She has some free short stories about vampires I'd really recommend reading, but since I've been loving this book (which is futuristic dystopian kind of deal) so much, I made a graphic for it:


I think the protagonist might actually be a white girl, or at least half white, but I was picturing her as afro-latino, with really good hair, like above, so. Yolo.

This book is really aesthetic, and I love aesthetic, so you can, and should, get it here. I'll warn you though, it gets pretty dark. (Trigger warning for physical and sexual abuse/rape.) But all the darkness is handled pretty well and not, like, glossed over.

Aside from that I've been rereading snippets of Ink by Amanda Sun, Extraction by Stephanie Diaz, and Lady Midnight, by Cassandra Clare.

Sometimes I like to pick things I've been through, even several times, off of the shelf and just read a few passages.

Sometimes I do it for one passage and end up rereading an entire book. That's just how I roll, though.

Thursday 28 April 2016

Obligatory What?

OBLIGATORY INSTAGRAM PLUG, THAT'S WHAT, BITCHES. YOU SHOULD FOLLOW ME:


It's mostly selfies nobody asked for and pictures of the nature around my home, but there's some art and books thrown in there for good measure. Check it out! (If you dare.)

Monday 25 April 2016

Top Ten Vampire Novels!

In honor of Blood of Midnight being free on Kindle for one last day, I decided to countdown my top ten vampire novels. I have read a lot of vampire novels. What qualifies? Every genre, from urban fantasy to paranormal romance, ya to na to adult. No holds barred.

For me, vampires are a fixture of both horror and sex appeal, and they can make or break a book, depending on how they're depicted. The books aren't organised by literary merit (for example, I believe Carry On is a much better book all around than Shadow Souls, but as far as the depiction of vampires themselves go, Shadow Souls takes the cake.)

10 - City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

City of Ashes isn't technically a vampire novel, but this fantasy novel has a few of my favorite bloodsuckers in it; Simon, Raphael, Lily, Camille - Clare has a some of the best members of the undead masses, here. Plus, that scene where Simon bites Jace is really, really hot. Jimon for the win, bitches!

9 - Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

These books annoy me, I'm not going to lie. They're also addicting. As much as I often want to punch Sookie in the head (mostly in the later books, as opposed to the first few) there's something about these that is just undeniably fun and entrancing. They get more watered down as the series progresses and other entities are introduced, though.

8 - Blood Promise by Richelle Mead

This is easily the best of the Vampire Academy series, at least in my opinion. It's hot, sure, but it's also got a broad scope - Minnesota to Moscow, people - and a deadly romance. Rose really rises to the occasion in this book and the emotional arc + intense final action sequence leave their mark.

7 - Interview With The Vampire

This is self-explanatory. It's set primarily in the south. It's homoerotic. It has Lestat. Lestat is my husband, people. Stay the fuck away from him, we're gonna get married someday.

6 - New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Yup, I'm gonna go there. Why does this make the list, you may ask? Because while the Twilight Saga is hella problematic and cheesy, it has its moments. I like New Moon the most, mostly because Bella is less insufferable in this, and because we get to meet the Volturi. Meyer focuses on romance too much, but when she focuses on horror, her horror tends to work. Also, you know, Emmett is my husband.

5 - I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

This is a treasure. If you haven't read this you're missing out. There is a certain sadness and hopelessness to this novel, but the vampires are very evocative of sheer, unbridled tear.  I consider this a must-read.

4 - My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking

My Blood Approves is, essentially, Twilight with normal teenagers. I.E. what if Bella acted like an actual teenager instead of a forty year old woman? Hocking has said she wrote these with the Scream franchise in mind, having a conversation with the vampire romance genre the same way Scream is a conversation with the slasher genre, and it works. It's fun, funny, and kinda adorable.

3 - Carry On by Rainbow Rowell 

Another book that isn't actually a vampire novel, but is, instead, a fantasy. The love interest is a vampire though. A gay vampire. A gay wizard vampire. Baz is also my husband. I now have a harem of vampire husbands. There is nothing you can do about it.

2 - The Return, Shadow Souls by L.J. Smith

This is just, I don't even know, it's the best. The Dark Dimension was a world that fascinated me, and of course, Smith is like, the vampire queen. The Return Arc took the Vampire Diaries into high fantasy territory, and it worked. For me, at least.

1 - The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike

Like all Pike books, the last vampire isn't for everyone. It's dark, kind of ruthless, and also corny as fuck at times. but it also has competent writing, a fascinating main character, and a very rich mythological tapestry. Also, slight sci-fi and thriller elements.

Honorable Mentions: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, Frostbite,The Vampire Lestat, Black Beast (Shadow Thane), Insatiable.

So that's that, folks. All in all I think we can agree, if not on specific titles, then at least on the fact that we all loves the fanged undead. Also that, more than anything else, I deserve a harm of vampire husbands. If Dracula can have three brides, I can date a bunch of immortal studs, okay? Let me live.

***

If you like what I have to say you can find more from me on Twitter, or buy my books here! I also have a YA parody twitter.

Sunday 24 April 2016

Why Fangs Matter

A lot of people like to talk about how annoying it was that Stephanie Meyer made her vampire sparkle, but I never minded that. The affront, to me, was that she took away their fangs. Fangs have to be the most important part of the vampire anatomy, even more so than pallor, ugly capes, bad accents, and red eyes. Fangs are my bread and butter.

In all honesty I just love the aesthetic. Something about a pair of vampire fangs with some blood dripping or biting into a throat, that's picturesque. I think that's why vampires will never go out of style; they manage to be sexy and really, really fucking scary and disgusting, all at once, there aren't many other paranormal creatures who manage to be both alluring and grotesque in the same way.

Werewolves come close, but most of the time its no dice. It takes a special author to really do werewolves right, at least for me.

Vampires are another story. That's not to say that I haven't read my fair share of vampire stories, because I have. I've read and reread them.

Twilight, obviously, was the Big One, back when I was thirteen I had that whole Twilight phase, yes. Dark times.

But also, My Blood Approves, The Vampire Diaries, I Am Legend, to a lesser extent the Mortal Instruments, among countless other traditionally- and self-published books. And there are so many popular vampire series; House of Night and Vampire Academy both blew up in the YA genre, so there's even room for vampire stories that prey on some of the same tropes.

To some extent Blood of Midnight (which is free today and tomorrow!) was an inevitable book for me to write. But I also know its not the last vampire book I'm gonna write.

Every once in awhile, you just need to shove a Dracula insert into a high school romance, you know?

And I think there's still a market for it. Despite how saturated it is, yes. How many people rewatch The Lost Boys once a year? How many people still troll Twilight forums or tune in to watch Vampire Diaries every week? Quite a few.

So that's me: secretly rooting for the vampire genre from my post in the doorway of your bedroom closet or the swath of shadows in the space beneath your desk, every night from twelve to four am. I kid.

Maybe.

***

If you like what I have to say you can find more from me on Twitter, or buy my books here! I also have a YA parody twitter.


Saturday 23 April 2016

Blood of Midnight is free for the next two days!


Blood of Midnight is going to be free in the Kindle Store for the 24th and 25th! If you're looking for a fast read with some dark subject matter, intense action scenes, and vampire court intrigue, pick it up!

You can find the book here! And here's a quote;


Friday 22 April 2016

Take This



This is the face I make when I remember the sheer amount of editing I have to do in the next seven days in order to get this book out by my entirely self-imposed deadline. This is life.

Tuesday 19 April 2016

The Place of Disappointment

A lot of writing Desperation comes from a place of disappointment; it's waking up and finding out you're special, you're the chosen one, there's magic around you - but it doesn't matter because you feel alienated and none of your problems are fixed and it doesn't make up for the fact that you're an orphan and your Dumbledore is kind of a grouchy bitch who has no clue how to help you. Throw in boys kissing boys, insect metaphors, and old mansions, and you've got this book.

There's this place Val, as a character, comes from, where it's all indecision and self-resentment. He feels like he's wasted precious time and he's always one-step behind, and he's suffered this big loss to the point where he doesn't know who he is anymore, if he's not the person who just. . .survives.

Essentially, what happens when you move past trauma and realize you have lost a lot of your own identity, as a person? How do you redefine who you are? How do you do it when everything around you is unfamiliar?

How do you do that while magical creatures try to seduce, steal, or murder you? That's what this is about.

It's also about paranormal romance and urban fantasy, in general. Those books have these moments where there are big speeches and romantic declarations and dramatic feuds - but what happens, in reality, when you're trying to relate these complex feelings and the words just won't come out?

How do you work around awkwardness and fear and internal conflicts in order to really, truly reach a place where you can communicate with someone? And how do you reach a place where you don't blame yourself for the past? When stuff isn't all big declarations of emotion and destiny and fate, when there are so many moments of wondering and questioning everything, how do you really fight evil or save the world? Because Val is thrust into this spot where he's got warring factions fighting over him, and monsters hunting him and harming the people around him.

He's got something, not essentially, but close enough to, a destiny to fulfill, and at the same time he's dealing with the first true romantic relationships of his life and leaving behind not only childhood, but his home.

Throw in mourning over his father, and the boy has issues. It's a dark book.

It's also a very light book, at the same time, because while so much of his story is despair, Val really comes from a place of Joy, and kind of this childlike wishing of everything to fit together and be simple and easy. He's got a kind of innocent soul, when its stripped to its barest level.

I'm in that place right now, as a writer, where his voice is starting to click for me, and the story is starting to grind together in the right way where I'm feeling the ball start to roll. I can see myself drafting the rest of this in a very timely manner before moving on the the two Dreamwalker books. AKA; projects are going well.

***

On that note, you can buy the Dreamwalker novella, a standalone story, here! Or, you can hit me up on twitter here, for more talk about work, writing, pop culture, and pretty boys. (A very important subject, clearly!)

Again?

Here's a Desperation quote! Again? Yes, again. I am having a lot of fun writing this book:


Monday 18 April 2016

Desperation...


I'm going to draft the next 3 or 4 chapters of Desperation tonight, concluding the first act of the novel, and then have the next two acts done within the next four days. That means that this book will be out sooner than I thought!

It helps that it's a lighter, fun project to take my mind off a more intense beast I'm about to tackle another round of edits on. Plus, gay faeries. It's just a fun, romantic story with lots of action.

Here's an extract:

The lingering echo of death filled my mouth like the taste of copper, and I turned around and plunged into the forest after the rude boy who’d just saved my life.

Rowan led the way through the dense forest without a word.

I spent most of the walk staring at the rippling muscles of his back. He was muscular, but not overtly so—more lithe and slender. There was something slightly feline about the way he walked, graceful and silent, while I crashed through the underbrush like a bull in a china shop.

By the time we reached the edge of the forest, the sun was setting. It had been only four in the afternoon when I’d pulled myself out of bed and left the house, but now the balmy summer air had taken on a slightly cooler level and the sky was a rippling canvas of pink and purple.

We stopped at the edge of the forest, a silent agreement, and stood together for a moment. Across the lawn, George looked up from where he was tossing his tools into his wheelbarrow and spotted me. He had clearly been at work for a while, sweat beading on his dark brown skin. His eyes widened, face registering surprise, and he began to wave me over.

“Thank y—” my words cut off abruptly as I turned to face Rowan.


He was already gone.

And, as always, a link to the first chapter!


Discussing YA: How Queer Characters Make Your Book More Realistic

Look, queer people exist. You don't have to like us, you don't have to want to write about us. But we exist. And if your fictional world doesn't at least acknowledge that we exist, it's gonna feel unrealistic, and at least a third of your readership is going to think you have ingrained homophobic tendencies. Seriously.

I can not tell you how many times I've had the immersive experience of a book ruined simply because it felt so unrealistic that every character in it was heterosexual.

And the thing is, you don't even need to write queer main characters. I mean, you should, yeah. Representation is important, and a big chunk of getting over ingrained self-hatred and internalized homophobia is about seeing healthy, happy reflections of yourself represented in fiction. But that said, if you, for some reason, be it personal preference or publisher interference or just the fact that you're one of those trash human beings who really thinks queer people are evil, don't want to or can't, write queer main characters, you can still include them.

Stephanie Perkins included two gay dads in Lola and the Boy Next Door, which created valuable representation and added a note of realness to the novel, but they were still minor, background characters. Kiera Cass mentions that girls can like girls without ever introducing a lesbian character in her book The Heir, and Marie Lu show both minor and major characters having same sex attractions without it taking up the focus. Jessica shirvington had a gay couple develop as frenemies, to friends, to lovers in her Violet Eden series, while only confirming it as romantic in the last book.

You can include diverse depictions of humanity's interaction with sexuality and gender without it being all about that, or taking focus from other aspects of your work.

Look, I'm not here to argue that queer people aren't evil. Why? Because it's 2016, and I don't feel like I should have to defend us in that way. If you're still hanging onto those beliefs, you're delusional, and I can't cure mental illness and paranoia through a computer screen.

What I can do is reason with you, so here's some reasoning: ignoring the existence of queer people, no matter what you think about us, both marginalizes a chunk of potential readership and also makes your art suffer.

It doesn't feel realistic to read a book where every single character falls into a straight romance with a heteronormative bow wrapped around it.

It doesn't feel realistic to read a book where every single character is just presumed to be straight when we know so little about them.

It doesn't feel realistic (or entertaining) to read a book where characters so obviously fall into a storyline or situation where an exploration of their sexuality or deviation from the straight 'norm' would make for a better journey or story, and watch it not happen.

I can name a slew of YA books where queer people just ... don't exist. Readers can handle queer characters. What's more, we want them.

A large fraction of your readers, even if they aren't queer people themselves, know someone who is gay, have a relative who is lesbian, are in a club at school with a kid who's trans, are talking online with peers who are asexual - if you think they aren't ready for this representation, or that they aren't actively interested in reading it, you're dead wrong.

There is no end to the benefits of writing a queer character, or having these conversations. At the end of the day, the only one you really need is this, though: we exist. We exist in the real world, and our absence in your books is out of place, a glaring elephant in the proverbial room, and it hurts the quality and tone of your work.

If you're too afraid to write queer characters because you think it will somehow bog down or ruin the entire book to have a gay person in it, you should probably be worried about your writing skills as a hole. Just saying.

Friday 15 April 2016

Discussing YA: sex & masturbation in YA novels.

So today we're gonna talk about sex. And masturbating. Why? It's important. That's right kids, it's time to talk about the birds and the bees. And I don't mean the ones who make you think oh fuck, not again, when they start chirping outside your window at four am to remind you you still haven't slept, yet.

Nope. I'm talking 'bout the ones you use to make babies. Or not, if you're me, and hate children, which I am, and do.

Moving on: kids and teens need to read about positive portrayals of sex and masturbation.


Teenagers need to be reading scenes where teenage characters engage in healthy, safe, consensual acts of sex and self-pleasure. They need to read these scenes with straight couples and queer couples, across spectrums of gender identity.

Why? Because if they don't we're opening them up for an intense whirlwind of unhealthy attitudes and experiences and harmful situations/

Teenagers are having sex. They're thinking about sex and talking about sex and engaging in it. They're touching themselves and exploring their bodies and often putting themselves in dangerous, unhealthy positions and relationships in order to do it.

Why is this important? Because we live in a society that commodifies people's bodies and the idea of sexual pleasure, in a world where a capitalistically informed version of sex and relationships, one governed by heteronormative ideals and harsh beauty standards. And it's fucking with kids heads.

So, my writing advice for this week is just this: let your characters have a good relationship with their bodies, let them have sex without feeling ashamed or being shamed by others.

Talk about sex in an honest, frank, healthy way. It's on your readers' minds and it's a part of their lives. Teenagers lives are not rated pg-13; they just aren't. They do drugs and have sex and witness violence, like any other humans do. We need to stop crafting stories for teenagers in which they see glorified, perfect versions of themselves that have no flaws and no disposition towards human behaviours.

I.E. teenagers aren't perfect and often, writing perfect characters who never do a thing wrong or ignore emotions and experiences that aren't 'appropriate' can be harmful to your readers.

Does this mean cramming pointless sex into every scene or sacrificing substance or tone to include these scenes? No. But it does mean they should be considered and treated as a part of normal, daily, teenage life, which they are.

Tuesday 12 April 2016

Blood of Midnight & Taking Things Apart (Book + Cover Reveal!)

Where the hell have I been? Writing a novella. And editing a book for publication. And turning twenty. And other things!



So, awhile back I posted the cover for Dreamseeker, along with a blurb. That book is now published, and you can get it here! But on top of that, I edited a novel I wrote about a year and a half ago, gave it a fresh round of edits, and published it as well! That book is a vampire novel called Blood of Midnight, and you can buy it here!

Here's a quote:



So, what's up with Blood of Midnight? Well, it's essentially what happens when I write a book just to dissect and deconstruct a bunch of YA vampire genre tropes. It has bicurious vampire soldier girls and plot twists galore. It blurs the line between young adult and new adult, but I'm calling it YA.

I would mainly call it a race against time mystery, about trying to root out a traitor in a vampire court before the future king's coronation. Also, there's a mysterious cult.

BOM is basically me taking apart the YA love triangle and the pointless girl hate trope, while also deconstructing or inverting the action girl archetype, along with a few others I can't give away for spoiler-y reasons.

I originally planned to scrap and rewrite this novel entirely, bringing it from fast-paced, slightly commercial mystery-adventure-romp thing to fully fledged dark urban fantasy, but frankly, I think it's a good book. It's not my best work, since I've finished 5 or 6 books since the time I wrote it, but at the same time it's fun and fast and I think it has enough merit to stand on its own. And honestly, as an introduction to this world, it works.

The book is standalone. This isn't a series. But it is a world, and it's one I plan to write in again. I'm calling it the Evernight Saga, but, I repeat, IT ISN'T A SERIES.

Characters from this will appear in future books set in this world, but they're more spiritual successors than direct sequels. Like an anthology series, I suppose. Yup, I'm going the Scream Queens route.

Anyway, I'll have more in the next few weeks - including posts about why casual sex is important in YA novels and starting a YA parody account on twitter!

Sunday 10 April 2016

This Is How It Happens (Short Fiction)

{AN: this is a short piece of a longer story I'm writing that I have no other info on, yet. I'm hoping to put it out this fall, though. It's gay romance, and it's, surprisingly, contemporary. Enjoy!}

I can’t believe that this is how it happens; this is where I finally give up. One in the morning, standing out in the cold, screaming at the top of my lungs, while I slam this huge boulder against a car again and again.

Inside, Santa is yelling and cursing and I can see him fumbling around. Ryan is screaming at me and trying to pull me away, and it makes me drop the boulder.

I shake him off and pick it up again. Go for the taillights. The paint job. The windows.

They’re built to withstand a crash, but the glass cracks, spiderwebs, and turns into a mosaic of violence and impact under the blows of a massive boulder wielded by an angry drunk bitch just about as well as it would upon kissing pavement during an accident, so I keep hitting it. I’m not hitting the car, though. I’m hitting the asshole in festive clothes who robbed me, sitting inside of it. I’m hitting my fuckhead friend who pretended she didn’t see me crying in that dark room with a red cup in her hand. I’m hitting my aunt for making me do this, making me keep going. I’m hitting Perry, again and again and again, for kicking me out of her party. Halfway around the world and she still knows how to make me feel two feet tall and caught in a lie, even when I haven’t told one.

My hands are so cold I can’t feel them anymore, but before they got like that I think they were hurting. There’s a flash of red, like I may have sliced myself open on all the broken glass, but I ignore it, and then-

Then Ryan is body-slamming me and I topple to the ground. There’s no time to rest though, because he’s pulling me back up by the collar. "Kaye, come on!"

His blond/brown/bronze/auburn/so-many-colors hair is plastered to his forehead and his dark eyes are full of nothing but panic. Over his shoulder, red.

Not blood. Santa. The Santa Suit - the asshole who robbed us dressed like Father Christmas is climbing out of the car.

Something flashes silver in his hand, and I think it’s a knife, and I think that’s why Ryan must be screaming at me that we have to go, but I don’t want to go. I want that drunk asshole to come over here so this drunk asshole can kill him, and then I want to take the knife from his corpse and just kill myself, but Ryan doesn’t know that because he doesn’t know me, and how can I convince a stranger who isn’t insane to leave me here like this after I just fantasized about how much I want to beat his girlfriend in the head with a big boulder?

It makes me angry that I feel guilty about that - Perry is awful to me, she’s always been awful to me.

Not because I’m faulty, but because she doesn’t know me and she thinks that what she sees on the surface is all there is.

But I feel guilty. Fuck, this guy.

Ryan’s fingers twine through mine, rough and cold and bony. He starts to tug on my arm. I let him pull me away, and when he starts to run, I do too.

“This way!” he shouts, the wind stealing half his words.

I follow him when he careens around the corner, feet pounding on cobblestones, and we keep running long after we’ve ditched the robber. Just two blurs of black with pink cheeks and wild eyes, running through frozen streets until all the world knows how to be is a blur of color in the corners of our eyes.

If this is dying, it feels better than I ever expected.

Friday 8 April 2016

Dreamseeker Book + Cover Reveal (Free book!)


Dreamseeker is my new novella, and it's got best friends falling in love and pretty alternate worlds and teenagers hunting monsters in small Maine towns. What more could you ask for?

Dreamseeker is going to be up on the Kindle store in a few days for 99 cents, but it's also free to read on Wattpad here!

Here's a quote, to entice you:


Desperation Book + Cover Reveal

I feel bad for dropping the blogging ball there for a while. It's going to happen again, and I can't avoid it, because when it comes to book vs. blog post, I choose book every time.

Right now I'm stretched pretty thin, and I just started serializing a new book on Wattpad.



When seventeen year old Valentino ‘Val’ Crenshaw’s father dies, he’s sent to live with his estranged grandmother, a reclusive novelist holed up in the decaying family manor in a tiny town called Bronzewood.

But what Val doesn’t know is that the town he left behind at birth has been waiting for him, that his father took him away to keep him safe. Now, as Val attempts to settle into his new life, a vicious world of courtly intrigue, dangerous immortals, and ancient magic that lurks in the forest, waiting and watching, begins to emerge from the shadows. . .

As Val starts to unearth family secrets that might be better off kept hidden, and discovers a secret world that could cost him his life. When Rowan, a faerie knight with a dangerous past, and Malcolm, a Sightwielder wise beyond his years, both vow to protect him, Val realizes that he has more to worry about than being accepted in his new home; both of the faerie courts are after him and they will stop at nothing to claim him.


The forest is alive with the world of the fey, and they all want the same thing. . .Val’s life.

Make of that what you will. It's a boyxboy romance with court faeries and magic flowers and small towns and fancy mansions. It's got sass and hot boys and all of my favorite paranormal romance things.

Did I mention it's gay romance?

I'm really excited to be back to my favorite genre. Writing about straight people tires me out sometimes. There's just. . .so much of it out there. It's hard to feel like I'm doing anything original or interesting writing about those relationships, and while I don't mind the extra challenge, I just have more fun writing about queer people.

So, boys kissing, daggers flying, butterfly and spider imagery, ancient forests, and more!

And I'm serializing it on Wattpad. Read it here!

On Self-Publishing. . .

Look, being a self-publisher is not easy. There are resources that aren't available to you and no marketing department with skilled agents to get your book into people's hands - people assume your book is going to be awful without glancing at it and other people assume you self-publish because you weren't good enough at writing to snag an agent and publisher, even though that's probably not an option/route you even considered or tried.

Indie authors are our own agents and handlers, we're often our own cover designers and site builders and we have to pull twice the weight our traditional counterparts do.

But it's worth it. It's worth it because when you do make a profit, you get to keep more of said profit. It's worth it because you don't have a publisher forcing you to remove queer characters and romance from your book, because you don't have the chance of getting stuck with a cover you don't personally like or have to jeopardize your artistic integrity to please an in-house marketing agent.

I would never say don't go for traditional publishing - I plan to be a hybrid author someday, I understand the draw and benefits of that position - but don't eschew the indie route as a non-valid option. I didn't consider trying to traditionally publish when I started putting out books, this is not my backup route or my only option - it's what I wanted and what I went for because it worked best for me, and if you dismiss the fact that there are midlist and upper level authors turning down 6 and 9 figure deals to go it their own, then you haven't been listening.

40% of book sales today are ebooks, there are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of beloved writers with devoted fanbases self-publishing, there are amazing resources and a close-knit, intelligent community. Beth Revis wrote the Across the Universe trilogy and then chose to self-pub The Body Electric, and it was arguably her best work yet. (IMO - I highly recommend reading them all though.) Look at what Joe Konrath is doing, and what Amanda Hocking achieved. Look at Nenia Campbell who have close-knit fanbases and erotica authors like Selena Kitt who have basically built an empire. And then tell me this isn't a valid option.

Stop chasing dreams that revolve around gatekeepers and massive slush piles and rejection after rejection because you're letting valuable, good books go to waste because one agent didn't like it or one house didn't think it was a great fit for their imprint and take matters into your own hands.

A Duke Won't Do by Jessie Clever (Book Review)

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," he growled right before his mouth came down on hers. The perfect cozy, wholesome romance ...

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