No Reason I Shouldn't

 Shockingly, not many people read this blog. I know, I know, a blogger blog for an indie author that hasn't regularly published since 2020/2021 isn't a huge hit. Shocker, right?

So I think sometimes I shouldn't even bother publishing here, but then I think, there's no reason I shouldn't, either.

Frankly I do it for myself as much as anyone else; it keeps my head clear and me focused on my goals, rather than ambiguously shuffling around trying to remember what I was doing. Like, right now, I'm working on things I can't announce, but I am working on things.

Like, launching new pen names, new books, republishing old books with cool new editions. Writing sequels. But it's hard, hard work. And I'm also psyching myself out.

I used to blog so much, and had so much fun.

I think that's worth trying again.

I noticed last year I only posted four times. Probably because it flew by, but also because it felt like I had so much happening. Now I kind of wish I had slowed down and made more of that time and documented it more. Ah well, I can at least start now.

So, this month I released an album.

It's called The Chaos Precise and it's only up on Bandlab right now. You can check it out here.

Here's the cover:

 

 

 

The tracklist is eleven songs. There was another song called Twisted Delicate that came just before and led into the track 'somewhere in the middle' but it kept getting copyrighted and made private. I submitted an appeal and they restored it only to flag it and remove it again. I'm at my wits end. I'll still publish that track elsewhere because I did remove all the copyrighted samples from it only for them to still mess around.

Anyway it's got a little pop, a little rock/grunge and a little weird digital stuff. I never know how to make something one genre, or make the genres sound interesting, but it is what it is. I love this record.

For now, that is. I'll probably decide I hate it in a few weeks and then make a new one.

I have a weird love/hate relationship with all my music, but it's the best I can make it and at a certain point you just have to release shit.

I'm gonna get back to my writing projects, but at least I feel like I've contributed something to this blog for this year.

Life, Signs, Reasons, Snow & Fresh Starts

 I somehow didn't post for an entire year. It was probably for a million reasons. I had big plans, but most of them fell through. I didn't have anything to talk about, or so much I wanted to talk about I got anxious and psyched myself out of it. I had a billion dumb thoughts that I posted to Instagram stories instead of blogging about. People and animals died. Life lost its meaning for a while, and I lost the threads.

Lately I've been reminiscing about how much I used to blog. I really loved it. It didn't matter how many or how few people read it; a blog post could get two views and I was still getting joy out of it. I still love reading old blog posts from years ago.

I am writing. In little bursts here and there. And I did publish a novella a while back, called Digital Demon. Which you can read on Wattpad, right here!

The basic premise is that a demon comes out of a guy's computer and tries to eat him.

It took me two years to get around to editing that story; I wrote it in November or December 2020. I cannot believe it took me so long to stop procrastinating and obsessing over it and just force myself to edit it. But editing it took it from like 6k to around 12k words or higher. I don't remember the final wordcount, but it went from short story to novella and got a couple new scenes that got me really excited about the story again. In the end it only took a few days to edit it, I just wish it hadn't taken two years to get around to those two days, but such is clinical depression and lots of grief from lots of death.

Basically I have a lot going on right now writing-wise and I don't want to talk about any of it in great detail and jinx myself. But what I can talk about is that I'm downloading Final Fantasy 7 Remake to replay it, but it's making my internet slow as hell.

And I can tell you that I'm watching Troy: Fall of A City. It's been pretty corny so far but the main actor playing Paris/Alexander is hot, so I'll keep watching. The sets are nice too. The costumes feel weird, like they should have had some of the actors/characters switch wardrobes honestly. And I don't know if the actress playing Helen of Troy is serving what she needs to, she seems kind of alien. Either way I'm gonna continue with it.

But first I'm gonna grab some snacks and figure out what project I want to work on next. I'm gonna watch some Community and do some sketching while I do that, though.

Returning To Roots

 Oh look, it's another instalment in the endless saga of theme changes this blog has been through! Well don't worry, folks. I think this one is here to stay! I really enjoy it. I've neglected this blog for far too long because:

1) I figured Blogger was dying (and it kind of is, I guess, but I don't care anymore).

2) I figured nobody was reading it (which isn't totally true, but it wouldn't be a big deal if it was).

3) I am very intimidated by picking out a blog theme. It's hard. I've seen people call blogs just like mine ugly and clunky, but I don't care. This design/theme makes me nostalgic for a ton of other author blogs I used to follow.

Now I've just accepted this is what my blog looks like and this is what I want it to look like. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It's...very, like, 2009-2011 YA author vibes, and you know what? That's when I was in middle school dreaming of being an author, and the paranormal romance trend was at its peak, and I miss that. Plus I don't really like 'sleek' minimalist blogger themes. I need a good one-column text-based theme for my blog. Simple and clean.

Not, like, the Utada Hikaru song, either, although that is a bop.

My Kingdom Hearts nostalgia might be in overdrive right now because I've been playing through FF7 Remake - thanks, PS Plus! - and loving it. Cloud is such a nerdy twink and everybody is flirting with him, and Aerith is a queen! I figured she might be an overrated character, because I've only ever seen bits and pieces of her so I wasn't sure if she deserved her popularity, but she's so funny and full of personality. I worried she might just be a blank slate 'nice girl' for Cloud to mourn, but she's really cool and has more personality than he does, lol.

Anyway I just wanted to briefly pop in and announce the reasoning behind my reversion to this simple old theme and the black/purple color palette I used to use. It just feels right to me. I think it's nice. Even though it is slightly clunky, but I think that may be part of the charm.

And, since I am going to keep writing on here no matter what, I'll probably try to find a way to direct attention to this site on other social media platforms. My favorite authors all ditched blogger for like, Twitter, but Twitter makes me suicidal. And Instagram is cool but I don't feel like me or my surroundings are pretty enough to post there except on Stories. So I'm determined to make this blog come alive again.

Alexa Donne was saying in one of her newer videos about author branding and marketing and how to avoid burnout with both, that blogs might not be as popular as they used to be, but that the written word is just a more enjoyable format for some people, and I know that rings true for me. For some of us that just won't change.

Plus it's hard coming up with content ideas. I want to explore new mediums of content, but some of them are very intimidating, and you also have to figure out how to make them compatible with social media in order to actually share them and create interaction. So that's intimidating. But I like blogging. I'm good at it. Even if it isn't a hugely popular form of content anymore. I can't be the only one who still enjoys blogs, right?

Another really smart thing Alexa Donne said in that video is that mailing lists are kind of over (because everyone has one and they're all kind of the same and they're pretty much just blog posts in email format anyway) and I'm happy about it because I honestly never figured my mailing list out. Shit's a mess.

Anyway, that's all on my end. If you need me, I will be writing gay stuff, playing Final Fantasy, and eating directly from my shirt pocket which is currently full of a handful of loose jelly beans, because that's what a heathen I've become during this pandemic.

Xoxo, Gossip Girl :D Nah, just kidding...I wish, though.

I'm Always Internally Screaming

So. New Blog theme. Again. The old one wasn't really fitting for an author blog; this one has a simpler layout and I feel like it will make it easier for people to browse old posts, so for ease of access (and aesthetic needs) here it is.

I have a lot to do tonight, including writing two new short stories and a bit of fanfic, so I'm just going to keep it short and say I have new content coming soon. I'll post a new blog later today or tonight about what I've been up to--I've been playing a cute new game I found and binge-watching The 100 so it's nothing too exciting, but it's something.

Later, y'all!

Forget My Name At Midnight

(*Title from the lyrics to Night Mime by Melanie Martinez)

First of all, I need to point out how pretty and sleek this blog is now. It was pretty and sleek before, but the new blog templates are super simple and aesthetically pleasing. I've been meaning to make this space cleaner and more professional looking for a while, especially since I'm not interested in making a static author site - I find them boring and dated, and I suspect most other readers do, as well.

That said, this page itself has been pretty static lately. Part of that is just me being the reclusive hermit I really am at heart and moping in a depressive state. I recently turned twenty-one and I always get weird and introspective around my birthdays. (Which is to say most of my days this month have been spent in bed, staring at the wall and musing about mortality and the human soul. Total downer, right?)

Another part of it is that I've been on an outlining kick, writing treatments and summaries for a bunch of books, along with designing covers and trying to hash out when I'm working on which projects.

I just finished revamping Blood of Midnight and publishing it under my adult pen name, Cosmo Knox. The main difference is that it has a new cover and a new name on it, but the material of the book is unchanged, aside from a new author note explaining the concept of the series. Essentially I decided that Dru's story from Blood of Midnight was complete in and of itself, despite the open ending, and I didn't want to write a direct sequel. Instead, each book in the series will be a new take on the same characters and scenarios, in the vein of the Legend of Zelda series.

In book two, Dru and Lucia will be boys, named Dru and Lucien, Vincent will be a Magister instead of a prince, and the Evernight curse will take a different form. The paranormal element also changes from vampires to sphinxes, which I'm excited about, since I feel like it's a more interesting, original mythology than vamps - although I do love hot boys with fangs. :)

That's not to say it's the same story repeated again - several aspects of both the world and characters are tweaked, but the plot always plays out a different way, with characters filling different roles. I've even considered making Dru the villain in a few of them... Book two in particular is going to play into a lot of different tropes and stories than what I explored in Blood of Midnight.

Some will be high fantasy while others are urban fantasy and paranormal romance... I may even write a contemporary slasher iteration of the story. (Scream vibes, anyone?)

Which is to say, each book is a standalone, and they can be read together or alone, and in any order.

Right now I'm editing the four original Lilac Jones Adventures stories to be republished as Beacon, the first in a trilogy of short story collections.

I have a cover to share, which is really pretty, neon, and hazy, but I'm holding it hostage for a while since I'm not done editing the stories. That said it should be out sometime this week.

In case you're wondering, that does mean there will be some fairly glaring changes to the stories before I republish them.

First of all, I wrote the first few when I was eighteen, and I'm just a way better writer and editor now.

Second of all, I want to spruce the books up for clarity and mine them for deeper material; mostly just developing characters and relationships further and showcasing who Lilac is as a person, outside of her adventures as a beacon. Also, when I wrote them I wanted them to be fast, fun, light stories that were kind of juvenile, and while they're still whimsical and entertaining, I did want to make them slightly more mature and display more of Lilac's intelligence and capabilities for the books to come. (I'm calling them Shine & Hex as of now, but they may change.)

I'll be updating the Lilac Jones tab at the top of the blog soon, but until then the old versions of the series will be there. Once I update it the page name will change to Beacon to match the new publication!

Beacon will contain the previous four stories with new editing and a few brand new vignettes added between them, while all the material in Shine and Hex will be new and never before published, and is yet to be written. The main bulk of my editing is updating the previous stories to match my current voice the the jump between books isn't too glaring, although there will be a time jump of half a year between the end of Beacon and the start of Shine.

I do plan on releasing other books set in this series in the future, and I have three other short story/novella series in the works right now that I want to focus on this year.

I'll be blogging more in the days to come - both about Beacon & those other projects, plus some craft stuff, so stay tuned! :)

***

You can follow me on Twitter here, or buy my books here...thanks for reading!

Why This Blog Died

This blog is mostly dead because I use Twitter more. If you want to keep up with me, I post multiple times a day on Twitter, whereas I post once or twice a month here, at the moment - and that's if I'm lucky. If I've written enough for my actual books for the month and my mental illness isn't battering at the doors to my mind and the stars align in the right formations and all that good stuff.

I do plan to blog more in the future. I don't know that it gets the word out or sells more books, but it's fun, it helps me collect my thoughts, and it makes me feel more...author-y? Authorial? There we go.

Right now I'm working on several standalone books and novellas, then I'll be finishing a novella trilogy before finishing up the Deadheart Duology, and after that I'll be setting out to finish the series I've already started. Obviously that's a lot on my plate, so it's understandable why I don't always have the time/energy to blog.

I'm honestly only doing it right now because I feel guilty at the state of this blog, and because I'm trying to procrastinate starting my wip.

In that vein, although I can't really say much other than that it's a novella called Ironheart, what I can tell you is that it's super fun and cute and that all of the chapters are named after different minerals and gems and types of metal. Mostly because I just got a book on all that stuff with glossy pages and cool pictures, and I love using neat chapter names and framing devices like that. It plays into the storyline, too, in the sense that my heroine does metal magik.

This is set in the world of my book Shadows of Ourselves (though the two stories aren't connected at all) and if you haven't yet, you should check that out!

What Am I Doing?

What am I doing? It's four am and I've suddenly become interested in True Blood again (I rewatched the first two seasons and saw the third for the first time this summer) and now I'm finally sitting down to devour the fourth season BECAUSE IT'S A PROBLEM OKAY? I honestly couldn't stop now if I wanted to. And boy, do I want to - because this show is keeping me away from my damn homework.

I have six assignments to do today, so once my parents leave for work I'm going to be spending hours sitting here finishing those up and then be able to hand them in tomorrow. I have to go back to school this week, and I don't know which one I'll even be going to or what I'm gonna be taking, so naturally it's fucking me up and I'm trying not to think about it.

Which hasn't been working out well for me so far, clearly. I need to finish them, but I keep procrastinating because, you know, that's who I am.

I also want to get in a workout today, which is going to be fucking painful, I already know. I did a nice one the other day, but now I'm sore all over. Fun, right? I know people say it's good to exercise, but I kind of feel like I died a bit.

What I need is to be able to focus on writing and publishing and building a career for myself, but I also desperately need this diploma, and to be healthy, and to, you know, face life. Which has been hard, since I'm also trying to balance the whole mental illness thing, and I'm not taking medication anymore because of the side effects. The upside is that I'm not going to randomly have a stroke or develop type two diabetes - the downside is, hey, I have to deal with all of this shit on my own now!

I don't like to talk too much about my mental illness, because I feel like sometimes in the past I've overshared and it hasn't been productive or healthy for me, but the basics of it is I have anxiety and depression, and minor paranoia.

I'm managing it, to be clear, but it's hard. And sometimes I do fail. And I know that that will happen; illness isn't easy, and sometimes it wins. But I like to win. And I do not like to feel helpless, which is how I do.

Right now I'm taking it day by day, focusing on self-improvement and trying to be kind to myself, and to be fair I think it's gotten a lot easier as I grow stronger and learn to take care of myself, but there are still days when I can't fight off invasive thoughts or work my way around it, and I go into a depressive episode or a state of mania and things get bad.

The reason I'm even bringing it up now is because I haven't really blogged since the beginning of the month, which makes me feel bad, because I like to keep this page updated and I honestly love blogging. But I went into a depressive episode that lasted a few days, and at the end of it I just knew I had to make some serious life changes and extract myself from certain situations that weren't healthy for me at this point.

So I did that, and it's been getting better, and things are getting back on track. I'm letting myself unwind with True Blood right now, but later today things pick up again.

The best thing I can do is pick myself up and do my best. So. Homework. Exercise. Healthy eating habits. Those are things I'm going to embrace today. And be productive.

School is going to be hectic, but Souls of Salt and Seawater will be out by the end of February or the beginning of March. I turn twenty on March twenty-second, so I want to be well-into edits on Shadows by the that time.

Revise and Revise and Revise and Revise

2016 is about editing, clearly. Because it seems like that's all I do now: wake up, coffee, edit book, coffee, edit book, coffee, edit book, sleep, coffee, edit book.

Because I'm actually editing two books. Okay, okay, I know, I said one at a time the other day. And I'm still sticking to that rule, and that book is still Sosas, and everything is on track. But I'm also doing a bit of editing on Things We Saw at Midnight every day for this revised edition, which is actually moving along.

I was right about it being mostly copy-editing, but one fun thing I did is get a new cover. It's not too different. In fact, it uses the same stock image and font - but it's definitely my favourite over the old design.

I won't be sharing until I've already hit published on the revised book (which should be sometime within the next five days, I'll post about it when it's done!) but I can't wait to share it, because it's like candy for the eyes.

I'm going to stop blogging right now and get back to writing, but since I said I would blog more this year I'm trying to, you know, do that.

I'll leave you this time with a song AND some male model eye-candy!

And:

Steven Chevrin

So there you have it. As always, I'm more active on Tumblr at In The Violet Hour, as in dozens of posts a day active, so follow me there for more frequent updates! (And a lot of pictures of half-naked male models.)

Coffee & Coffee & Coffee & Maybe Some Other Things?

I've been awake for a lot of hours. And I just drank like 6 or 7 coffees in the span of two of them. So, as you can imagine, I am fucking bouncing off the walls! It's fun.

I am going to be blogging a lot today, because I need to blog more, and I have the day off, and I'm in the mood to write, but I don't have the attention span to write anything longer than blog posts with all this caffeine in me. That said, I feel fine. Better than fine.

I spent some time editing SOSAS last night, which is coming along nicely, and I expanded on the worldbuilding. I've been sitting here for hours listening to Kpop now, though. Mostly f(x) but also a bit of Sunmi. I finished reading the Copper Gauntlet (a pure gem) and made a graphic for it, because I was loving Jasper in this book:

We do not froth.

I'm going to practice french for a few hours sometime today, as well. I really feel like I need to do a million things all at once, because I have so much energy, and I know I'm going to be all over the place like this all day now, but I really don't mind.

Blogs Are My Favourite Books

So the other night I realized blogs are my favourite books. I was sitting in bed reading Amanda Hocking's old blog posts for like, the millionth time, and I realized I am obsessed with reading blogs. And I don't mean blog posts - I mean blogs themselves. In their entirety. When I find a new blog, I will go to the last/first post in the archive and read the entire blog from the first post to the newest post, even if it means reading three to four years worth of posts.

I've read blogs like Amanda Hocking's (http://www.hockingbooks.com/blog/) and Zoe Marriott's (http://thezoe-trope.blogspot.ca/) and then I'll read ones about military wives who travel around to different bases around the world, or uni students living in Japan, or manga artists moving to Hawaii. And I'll read them more than once.

A good blog is like a good book, but even better, it's like a good conversation. A good blog has that nostalgia to it, like remembering a 3am conversation with your best friend from three years ago, except you can reread them again and again and again. They're a glimpse into other people's lives. Like right now, I'm sitting at my desk listening to Young by Vallis Alps, with a mug of black coffee beside my computer. The window behind me is open letting in the mid-September air, and I'm about to go do some laundry when I'm finished writing this.

Or, like, last night, when I though this post up, I was lying in bed, reading Amanda Hocking's blog, listening to Enemy Fire by Bea Miller, I was a little bit stoned, drinking lukewarm peppermint tea out of a chipped mug, eating leftover donair pizza from Pizza Shack, thinking about how blogs are nostalgia fodder and how I really, really love them.

See? Reading a blog gives you a glimpse into someone else's humanity - into their existence and what it feels like to be them. It's really, really cool, and there's nothing else exactly like a blog: it's basically a public diary. A bit invasive at times, maybe . . . but still interesting as hell.