WOLVES is out!

Wolves is out! I've been so excited to share this story, it feels really vindicating to release it. You can buy it here!

In case you missed it, Wolves is an urban fantasy featuring an ensemble cast. It has surreal elements perfect for fans of Welcome to Night Vale, but with a grittier, slightly more relatable edge to it. It's inspired a lot by the area I grew up in. The New Brunswick wilderness is very beautiful and the small towns and farms can be charming and also kind of eerie.

In slightly less exciting news, I published a new edition of Blood of Midnight. I'm about to start writing book two (And, oh boy, is the cover beautiful!) and I wanted to spruce up the first book to go with its new cover.

The changes aren't that significant. The chapters have titles now. There's a new prologue called Before: Pulse which I feel sets the tone of the book much better than the first chapter. The first two chapters have slightly expanded material, just new bits peppered in here and there. The end of the book also has updated acknowledgements and an Inspirations page where I talk about inspirations of the book, like songs that several chapters are named after, other vampire books that influenced my views of them and what their society would look like, and stuff like that.

The new edition is available on Wattpad in it's entirety here! If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's got action, romance, and intrigue.

The new edition of Iceblood is also finally finished updating on Amazon, so you should grab it if you're interested!

You can check the tabs at the top of the blog for the new Wolves page which has more info on the new release!

Iceblood (Cover Reveal)

Hi guys! I know I haven't been active a lot lately, but I have been writing. Obviously I'm always active on Twitter, but I like to keep this blog alive as often as possible.

Right now I'm gearing up to publish the solo edition of Iceblood, as well as editing a new draft for publication.

The deal with Iceblood is that I posted a couple months ago talking about how I was expanding it and adding in more of the world and expanding the plot. I did try that in several different ways, but eventually I realized it just wasn't working. I do want to tell those stories in Josmea, but I don't think they're Atka's story. I realized I like Iceblood as is; it feels like a complete, finished peace.

That said, I've shelved the expanded edition and any idea of a sequel. I'll probably use those plotlines and scenes in other books set in this world, and I'm sure I can squeeze Atka cameos into a few later titles.

That said, I'm just formatting the ebook now, so I thought I'd show the beautiful cover!

Is it not perfection?

I'm publishing the ebook edition tonight and formatting the paperback sometime this week! I'll post links when it's up on Amazon <3

Blur

I haven't posted in a while because I've been trying to work on stuff (and mostly failing) when I'm not in bed bingeing Sense8. I'm super lazy.

They say depression makes you sleepy, that it gives you physical fatigue, and I understand that, but I also still kind of blame myself for it. I hate not getting things done or being able to focus on anything. I hate feeling like an invalid.

I've mostly been spending my time designing and formatting book covers because it's the easiest, funnest part of my job. At the same time, I want something to put out.

The other day I wrote the first bit of Beacon book two, finally. I think the Beacon trilogy probably will be my next release, if I don't hop over and finish something else first, which could always happen. I'm trying to finish book two by Saturday the thirteenth, which is scary considering how close it is, but I haven't been setting deadlines for myself recently and I'm determined to get back on track.

Tonight before I start work on that I'm going to free-write a bit to try and get myself back into the writing groove.

 

(This is the deadline face...)

I have no idea what the hell I'm going to write about. People think the hardest part of being a writer is the long hours or the pressure to write something great. For me, it's picking out which paranormal creature to make the hot dudes in my books.

I love stuff like the Trylle Trilogy or the Paper Gods Trilogy, books where the paranormal aspect is something newer and original. I like stuff you don't see often.

The market is flooded with werewolf books and I'm sure there's always a market for them, but as much as I love them I'm not sold on them. I don't know if vampires still have a market. My vampire book doesn't sell well, but I don't market it much and it is kind of a niche title. I still can't tell if it's urban fantasy or paranormal romance, really, and I wrote it. (I still love Blood of Midnight, I think it's a good book, it's just not an easy one to sell >.>)

Need by Carrie Jones has pixies, which is cool as fuck. I've written about those before, in a vastly different way, so I don't want to do that. I can't write about faeries because I'm not in the mood. Gargoyles? Not right for this project. Genies? I'm too white and Canadian to pull that off respectfully without a bunch of research first, which I really don't want to do with a 'just-for-fun' project.

See how hard this is?

What kind of paranormal beings can my hot gay heroes fall for? It's an eternal plight.

I'd love to write about the undead or zombies, but I have no clue how to make them hot and not gross and/or mildly horrifying. I have some ideas, but I'm not sold on 'em.

This is the struggle.

I'm gonna go brew too many coffees for one person, which is what I usually do when I'm stressed, and never helps, but does taste good. Maybe I'll find the answers I'm looking for in a human-sized vat of boiling coffee...

~

You can buy my books here or follow me on Twitter.

Letting Things Take Time

I know that things take time. Especially manuscripts.

I know that I should let things take time and run their natural course, but it's hard. It's hard not stressing out over my not finishing a book in months when I'm also freaking out about everything else. My human existence. Whether or not I or anyone else is a good person, or at all redeemable. If God exists. If ghosts exist. What the hell I'm going to do for a living. How I'm going to survive and make end's meet if I can't even get out of bed or dress myself most days.

To be clear, I'm not making myself out to be some great victim. I'm not like, quivering and rolling around on the floor in a state of constant crisis. I might be close, but I'm not there yet.

I just stress myself out.

The thing is this entire struggle will probably remain forever a figment of my own emotions and imagination and paranoia, stuck inside my head, and I should ignore the fear and live my life to the fullest I can enjoy it.

But, you know, that's not how this whole existential dread thing works. I can't shut it off. And I need to chill.

So I'm dubbing this month the month of short stories and relaxation. Next month I'll worry about getting more serious and setting deadlines and really tackling whatever it is I'm feeling. But for now, I'm going to let myself wing these strings of random short stories and ignore the market and trends and what sells and what I want my author image to be and who I want to be as a human and if I can even become a halfway normal, functioning, worthwhile person, and just fucking write.

The truth is even though it all feels suffocating, most of what I'm feeling is not new. Other people have felt it and are feeling it every day. So I should breathe and not convince myself that my problematic symptoms make me evil, because I know who I am, or I should, and I'm trying to get back in touch with that person.

Maybe this month I'll somehow achieve that by writing a bit. Just for me, not anybody else.

My wip has fancy gowns and mansions and it's giving me Pretty Little Liars vibes, big time. Except it also has magic. Lots of it. And my worldbuilding is basically 'anything can happen' so I can write whatever the fuck I want. I probably won't write in this world again, which is also really freeing because I don't have to think ahead to what I want to do in future installments while writing the current story and building my world.

This is what I've been doing for the last five hours.

I'm going to get back to it and hope it makes me want to jump off a high surface a little less, and maybe produces something publishable.

(A totally unrelated aside; anyone else screaming with joy at the prospect of the new Shatter Me books?)

The Best Diet

I've been living on weed and coffee, which is probably not the healthiest diet, but also kind of the best one. I'm working on a fun new adult standalone set in the same world as Beacon that I'm pitching as Paranormalcy meets Kill Bill.

It's got witches, secret government agencies that deal with the magical world, steamy romance between a witch and a beacon/werewolf hybrid.

Writing has been really hard recently, and I think the only thing that will fix it and get me back in the groove is to finish another book and just get it out. Which is partly why I wanted to write a standalone - so I don't have to write a bunch of sequels before I can put it out.

After this book is done I think I'm going to wrap up the Beacon trilogy and then put out a new Liesmith's Sins novella. Then I can attempt to finish the Deadheart Saga. It's daunting to think of writing a four-book series. Really, really daunting.

I've outlined the first three, and although I think the second one needs a bit more work, they're fairly strong. At least in my opinion. Which might be a little skewered. Still, I'm glad I decided to expand the length of the series because there was no way I'd be able to develop the main romance and all the side characters with the depth I want to in just two books. Plus, more books = more villains, and we all love that. :)

I'm not outlining this, aside from jotting down rough scene ideas as I write, like I did with the first Blood of Midnight book. I don't normally wing things, but I just want to take my time with this and have fun so I can remember why I got into writing in the first place.

So yeah, that's where I'm at - I've been getting stoned and mainlining coffees and writing about witches and wolves.

Vampires and Lana

I wrote 1,300 words this evening and outlined the first novella in a new m/m vampire series I'm starting. I'm going to go write more in a minute, but I wanted to post another quick update. It's like, two in the morning and I'm listening to Lana Del Rey's new single Lust for Life while I write. I think what's so fun about this project is it's just for me.

I really love vampires, and this is kidnap romance, which is obviously my favorite. It reminds me a bit of the seraph chronicles, but it's also definitely its own unique creature. I think it's a little more intimate and darker than that--it's easier for me to work with vamps as a cultural touchstone because I grew up on them.

This is called Stolen, and I'm gonna try to put it out really soon. So get ready for gay vampire antics!

Down In Atlantis

If I haven't been blogging as much as I want to lately, it's only because I'm trying to break out of my weird writer's block. I have plenty of projects to work on, but I'm not sure if I'm in the right place, so I have to force myself to sit down and hammer out words every day, and most days I'm only hitting 500 or so before I call it quits. For comparison, I usually hit 4k a day at least while I'm in the middle of a project.

But that's not what's really depressing me. The fact that nothing ever changes has been what's depressing me. The fact that I live in the middle of nowhere with little human contact is what's been depressing me.

At least now it's summer. I deactivated my Facebook the other night, and I think I'm going to spend a lot of the next two months taking daily walks down to the river or other nice little areas around my house.

Back in summer 2015 me and Kuma were out running the roads a lot, and it felt like where I was supposed to be and everything was okay and the future looked good, so I'm trying to get back to that, because lately most days when I picture my future there's nothing but suicide or a big black blur. We walked to a nearby lake one day back then, and it took three hours but it was so worth it.

And now I can't believe it's been two whole years, that it's 2017, and I'm in the same place. We were planning so many big things back then that never happened, and I'm worried to let myself start living or planning things again when I know that those hopes might just crumble too.

I'm trying to keep my head down and work my way through whatever this funk is, and at least come out on the other side of it with a heightened wordcount. But it's been hard.

Which is why this blog has been drying up.

That, and I spend most of my days inside, sitting at the same spot, and don't have much to talk about. Like I said, though - winter is gone, and with the nice weather here maybe I won't be such a hermit.

Another big problem that keeps me from, you know, being me, is that every day I convince myself I'm dying of a terrible disease. I wake up like, "Oh my god, I think I have bone cancer!" And everybody else is like, "Kai, shut the fuck up."

And they are probably right.

But logic does not apply to the mass of writhing black gunk, toxins, and mental illness that is my brain. Meaning I spend my day imagining symptoms and worrying for nothing.

Or maybe I'm right, and one day soon I'll keel over of some undiagnosed monster tumor or something and you'll all be like, "We should have listened!" Either way, we're all cool. I am at peace with the void. Or if not peace, then like, a level of familiarity where the void and I could go shopping together without a third friend to be the buffer and it wouldn't be awkward, you know?

#TightWithTheVoid

Outside of all the gross personal stuff, I've been drinking as much coffee as I was before I said I wanted to try quitting caffeine. I'm still sleeping weird hours. I'm still outlining more projects than I can possibly write.

My brother really wants me to go see his new house, to the extent that he's holding my birthday gift hostage there, but I honestly never get a chance to go. I probably won't go until he gets a dog, and then I'll never go back again because I'm not welcome, because I tried to steal his dog, even though I have three of my own.

Although we may have to put our dog, Kota, down--she's really old, and her back legs are going and have been getting worse and worse for months.

Honestly, once I move out on my own I don't think I'll own pets. If I do, it will be like, a goldfish or two. That's it. Animals get too close to you and then they die. And they shed all over your house and keep you sneezing daily.

I'd love a little puggle, but I don't think I'd be a good pet owner on my own. Especially in the city...I wouldn't want to walk a dog at like 3 in the morning in the winter months. Plus I have strings of days where I don't shower, or brush my teeth, and I can't get out of bed, and I walk around in three-day-old pajamas with tangled hair and hiss at anybody who tries to talk to me. I don't know if the responsibility would be great for me, and I'm not one of those people who thinks the mere presence of a furry body is going to magically induce a cure for my mental illness or personal problems.

I think most animals are a lot of work, and I'm still trying to work out how to exist as a human, let alone a responsible adult. So. No pets. If I can show the self-restraint not to impulse buy a rabbit or some shit...

Aside from the threat of me someday coming home with a tortoise or a hamster I don't know how to properly care for, the most pressing issue for me has been my lack of finished work. We're just under halfway through the year and I still haven't finished a single book. I've barely done any work on the new edition of Iceblood, I just realized that Deadheart is going to be a four book saga instead of a duology (if I want to do the story justice, at least) and I'm feeling overwhelmed.

I also haven't been reading much at all, because nothing can catch my attention. Last night I finally gave up and started rereading Switched by Amanda Hocking, which is an old comfort read. (I think I've read the Trylle Trilogy six times since the first time I finished them in eighth grade, honestly.)

There really is never enough time. Especially not when I spend it blogging instead of peeing, making more coffee, or writing a chapter, all of which I have to do right now. So that's that.

Later :)