Chaotic Array

So, in honor of Shadows of Ourselves being out (you can buy it here ) I thought I would talk today about how I got the idea and inspiration for the book! Shadows really exists because of the scene in the alley in the first chapter. I had the image of Hunter protecting this boy from a pair of Charmer Hounds, and it was really the monsters that drew me in - I wanted to know what they were and who had sent them.   I'd always wanted to write a main character who could tell when people were lying - because wouldn't that be the best power? But Sky hates it, and as I wrote him I started to understand what kind of toll it would take. And, of course, since I'm a glutton for punishment, I made the magik hurt. Originally, the book was supposed to be a novella set in Chicago, but after a few false starts where I played around with the character ages and verb-tense, I started my outline from scratch, moving the book to Saint John. I grew up here, and I've always wanted to...

Why is my room built on a slant like this? Why am I so good at cutting my own hair? Why do I have an obsession with candles? Where can I buy more great candles? Why do I hate screamo so much? These are all questions that need to be asked. Today I've been finishing up an edit on the first ten thousand words of Dreamwalker, because I switched it from first-person to third. It fits the book better, and it will be easier to write it back to back with its sequel this way. I also, as you may have guessed, cut my own hair. Now I'm getting ready to do the cat box while I wait for my vegetarian pizza to get here. It's been a good day. Every day has been a generally good day lately. I mean, I'm really, like. . .I don't know if the word is anxious or if I should say I'm kind of falling into some unhealthy thought patterns. There's a gap in my vocabulary where the word for this feeling should be, but whatever, I'm not worried. At least I'm not depressed, a...

Alright. I realized I always have a lot of things/projects/series going on at once, and it might confuse a lot of potential readers, so I figured I'd make a post to talk about what's happening right now, as directly and clearly as I can. Here you go: My next book, Shadows of Ourselves, is out May 27th. It's a new adult gay urban fantasy novel. It's the longest book I've written, and the best, in my opinion, and you can pre-order it here . After that, my next publications will be the Dreamworld Duet - an urban fantasy duology comprised of the books Dreamwalker and Dreamkiller. The prequel novella is available now, here ! They're inspired by magical girl animes, and they've got some epic action scenes. I'm writing them both to completion before publishing them, so they can come out days within each other. Because having to wait for the next book in a series is the worst. After that I'm putting out We Die Like Angels which is part sci-fi, pa...

Lately I've been wondering why I get obsessed with random, strange things. When I say obsessed, I mean my brain will latch onto something odd and specific for weeks at a time, so it's all I can think about or focus on. It happens with events or people, tragedies or pieces of art or historical periods. I know everybody has obsessions, and its normal to latch onto certain things or run into mental stumbling blocks, but I wonder about it a lot. So, here's a list of things I've gone through obsessions with: The Titanic: I feel like a lot of people can relate, but I've spent hours and hours researching the Titanic, reading about it. I think one reason certain tragedies/events like this stand out in my mind because I have a really big fear of being trapped. The idea of being on the ship as it sank and knowing what was happening with no way off, I can't get out of my mind what that must have felt like or what those people must've been going through. ...

Wondering where I've been? Well, here's a list of things I've been doing in lieu of blogging: Editing Shadows of Ourselves and making it available for pre-order Giving Blood of Midnight a new editing pass Finishing up the paperback stuff for Souls of Salt & Seawater Drafting Dreamwalker, which you can find on Goodreads here Reading the new Sarah J. Maas book and crying Getting a new bedroom door (my old one was broken) Starting to take prozac Enjoying the fact that spring is here generally living life I've gotten a bunch of work done in the past few weeks, but I've barely been blogging at all. I probably should've kept up with it better, but Shadows of Ourselves ( pre-order it here !) was taking up all of my energy. I also designed the cover for Tears of Sunrise, the sequel to Blood of Midnight. I really love it. Once the newly edited version of BOM is up, I'll be putting out a new cover for Scars of Dusk, too. Right now I haven...

Shadows of Ourselves is available for pre-order!  The book is out May 27th, but you can buy it now and it will be delivered to your kindle instantly. To be clear, I think this is the best book I've written. It's the longest, at roughly 120,000 words, and it's the most unique, I think. It's got everything I love, and I had more fun writing it than I can remember having writing anything, really. I'm going to be sending the book to plenty of bloggers, and you can add it on Goodreads here . If you're a book blogger or reviewer in any capacity and you'd like a review copy, you can email me at ApolloBlake@mail.com and I'll be happy to provide one. I'll be blogging a lot more in the next few weeks, leading up to the release, so check back often for chances to win free copies of the book and learn more about it and the writing process!

Time for another character spotlight! Shadows of Ourselves is out May 27th, and it should be available for pre-order within the next two days! I really love this book. Edits took it from 73,000 to 120,000, and it's a much stronger, more nuanced book now. I cringe to know there are a select few people who read the rougher drafts. The final one is a lot better than I imagined the book could be. I'm glad I let it sit for a decent chunk of time, before editing. Today's character spotlight is for Jackson - who gets a bit more screen time now than he did in the original book. Jackson is a stranger who comes into the picture with a job offer for Sky, but there's a lot more to him than meets the eye. He's still a bit of a goofball, though. You can add the book on Goodreads here and, if you review books in any capacity and you're interested in an ARC, you can email me at ApolloBlake@mail.com, and I'll send you one!

Did the new Ariana Grande song nearly kill anyone else? Aside from listening to this on repeat I'm getting ready to go to my cousin's house and planning Shadows Of Ourselves release stuff. Because I'm really excited for it to come out this month. I'm going into workaholic overdrive trying to finalize everything. I wanna get paperbacks out within a few days of putting out the ebook because I want to host a few giveaways. I still need to sort out royalty info with the paperback distributor first, so I'm gonna stop by the bank today and deal with that. Overall I'm just excited to have a longer book out. The longer the book, a better. I love really big stories, and Shadows of Ourselves is the longest book I've written to date. Blood of Midnight (which is free today !) and SOSAS are both novel-length, but they're still short books. Also I genuinely think Shadows of Ourselves is the best book I've written, yet. I think it's got...

So, Shadows of Ourselves is going to be out on Friday, may 27th, and now that I have the release date chosen I can release the final cover! TA-DA! I designed the cover myself, and I'm really happy with the final product. Sky is a bit more masculine looking than he is in the book, but overall I think I captured his essence and the dark but magikal tone of the book pretty well. I would pitch this as Cassandra Clare meets Leah Raeder/Elliot Wake, kind of. It's got sorcery and monsters, incubi and romance, and it deals with some pretty dark subject matter like abuse and alcoholism. It's also got a highly diverse cast (transgender seelie queen, anyone?) and plenty of sex, action, and mystery. To be honest, I think Shadows is my 10 out of 10. It's the book I wrote because it was the book I always wanted to read as a teenager, it's just a really unique, interesting world. I know I'm probably not supposed to say that, since it's my own book, but I cra...

So, since this round of edits is almost done, here's a list of some things you'll find in Shadows of Ourselves: a gender non-conforming Ice Prince with good hair and combat boots a pansexual sorcerer with a book fetish lots of whiskey treacherous faeries lotus flowers and garter snakes strange visions underground temples bar fights a sassy incubus a fledgling journalist with purple hair and a knife in her purse

So, I have a lot of things to say. First, I pushed back the Maelstrom release from late 2016 to early 2017, so if you see 2016 attached to that book anywhere, that's wrong, and it won't be out until after the new year, most likely. Second, I revamped the covers for Rage & Frenzy, and updated the interiors for both those, Dreamseeker, and Blood of Midnight - just rearranging back matter and cleaning up the formatting and stuff. Here are the new covers for Rage & Frenzy: Someone whose opinion I trust told me the font was too gaudy, and I agreed, so I changed them. I added the leaves just to bring more color variance to both of them and make them feel a bit more magikal, because they are. Those aside, I'm almost finished with edits on Shadows, and I think that will be out around the end of this month or the beginning of next, depending on how much time that leaves me to come up with a marketing plan, because I want people to know about & r...

Today on the blog I'm talking with Heather Crews, author of Unchanged, Dreams For The Dead, and Psychopomp. Heather's books are moody, atmospheric, and mysterious, and I was more than happy to get the chance to discuss writing with her! The Author: Heather Crews  lives in Las Vegas. Was born abroad. Studied art. Will spray paint almost anything. Loves popcorn. You can find her on Twitter or check out her blog, Keeping Ghosts Alive ! The Books: Dreams For The Dead // Psychopomp // A Dark-Adapted Eye  // Unchanged ~ Interview: When did you decide or realize you wanted to write? Although my first dream job was an artist, I've been writing since first grade. My earliest efforts were short stories that basically made no sense. In third or fourth grade l I wrote my first book, an illustrated children's book called THE BIG PURPLE CATERPILLAR. I still have a copy somewhere. It wasn't until about seventh grade I made my first serious efforts at w...

New Adult Author Christina Elle just released the first look at the cover for her book On Her Six, a romantic suspense novel that releases this month on the 23rd! You can check out the book on Goodreads  and add the author on Twitter for more updates! The cover: Isn't that stunning? I love the way the blue pops! The blurb: New neighbors are bad news in Samantha Harper’s experience. Especially ones as suspicious and brooding as the guy who just moved in next door. So when the dangerous but sexy stranger seems to be involved in something illegal—the aspiring cop in her takes action. If only she could stop thinking about how he looks naked... All DEA agent Ash Cooper wants to do is lay low and survive this crap surveillance assignment. But after a run-in with his attractive neighbor, he realizes that’s going to be much harder than he planned. Keeping the woman out of trouble is hard enough, but keeping his hands off her is near impossible.

Hey there. If you like saying things and want another place to say said things, this might be that place! If you're an indie author looking for some free promotion or exposure, or you have a new or upcoming release you'd like to talk about, feel free to shoot me an email at ApolloBlake@mail.com! I love talking to fellow indies and helping out where I can, and if you write Young Adult or New Adult books, I'd probably love to feature you! Alternatively, if you're an indie author who wants to get interviewed for the blog, send me an email with the subject line interview and I'll send you a list of questions!

I'm in formatting hell. Yesterday it was cover stuff, but today I'm redoing the interior formatting for Dreamseeker and Blood of Midnight over because I noticed some tiny errors that annoyed me, particularly the spacing in the Dreamseeker ebook. I'm fixing them, but it's annoying, because my word processor is being a bastard, and I suck at HTML and stuff. That aside, I interviewed Heather Crews the other night (you may remember seeing my talk about her book Psychopomp, which I'm reading now, and I'd definitely recommend checking it out!) and I'm posting that later today. I was going to post it right away, but I keep posting blogs at like, 4 in the morning, which is probably not going to be a good time to post blogs. I'll post it around 11 am, probably. That aside I'm really just sitting here groaning over this formatting and eating nachos and salsa. #indieauthorthings