Fate, Strange Fate

I love PARADES. and Having Itchy Nails Tires me...

And having hangnails is annoying. And having to clip my nails every three or four days is super annoying. And not being able to release new stories yet is the most annoying. But what can you do? Nothing's really done yet to the degree I want to announce or share it.

I'm writing though. Lots! And it's all pretty cool stuff.

I'm also listening a lot to the new Anne Hathaway album. I genuinely cannot believe how good it is. She's a great singer but also the production and songwriting is immaculate. Burial, Dark Cradle, and Blue Flame are incredible. My favourite is Holy Spirit 2 though; what a damn song!

I haven't seen the movie Mother Mary yet but the album is immaculate.

Here's hoping Anne Hathaway continues releasing music though because she's fucking incredible at it! Easily eating these main pop girlies up.

Anyway I'm going back to drafting and I'm going to be listening to this album on repeat as I do it.

All I can say is this story is like Control (the best video game ever made) and Loki, an impeccable show, and maybe like Men In Black and X-Files and SCPFoundation. And it's gonna be great. It already is great, but it's only half done, so imagine how much greater it WILL be!

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.

A Reminder For You (Writing Pep Talk)

So I've been hard at work on a few titles I'm going to launch on Kobo, including Leo & Declan 1 and 2 (Under His Touch, Under His Watch) and the drafting process was being difficult last night, so I opened my notes app and wrote this. I think it's gonna be something I need to return to again and again, so I'll share it here for you all too:

I am worried about so many things I cannot control but what I can control is writing my book and editing my short stories so that's what I'm going to focus on.

It's not up to me to be perfect or control the universe or every reaction to my books.

All I can do is write them, then publish them, then market them, to the degree that I want to. That's all. The rest of it is out of my hands. And I can't force it. But I can work with it, move with it, evolve with it, and take it all as it comes.

That's what I can do. So that's what I'll do.

I'll write my gay erotica romance stories and urban fantasies and sci-fi stuff even when it feels silly or stupid or it isn't as groundbreaking or intelligent or literary as everyone else's book. I'll do what I want, have fun, and hope someone wants to read what I wrote, but I can only write what I want to write, and if nobody else is along for the ride, I guess that's that.

The point of this is just to say all of that outside stuff is noise. And noise can be tuned out. All I can control is that I can write my book, even if it means learning again, for the millionth time, how to adapt and pivot. I can do that much, and probably so can you.

Anything That It Takes To Keep My Head Screwed On Straight

Title from Silence by Emmy Meli.

It's been slow-going trying to come out of my fog and embrace the new year. That doesn't mean it hasn't had its upsides, because it definitely has. The weather is getting fresher and warmer daily, the sun is showing his face more and more every day, and there's always something to do, which might be overwhelming, but still, at least there's always something to do, right?

For me, it means working on the new edition of Under His Touch. It's been a lot more of a project than I thought it would be, mostly because I was never planning to create a sequel but also because I've been in the mood to write, to draft, and now I have to hold myself down and engage the editing brain. I know I can do it.

I enjoy it. I know that too. I always have fun with editing, when it's developmental edits. But this, alas, is line edits. So it's a slow, tedious brand of work that is almost like writing, but much more agitating. And I'm not good at being agitated.

So I'm doing my best. But I'm also trying to read more: it's actually insane that this is the same brain that read an entire book a day in high school. I try now, but it takes me two to four days to get through books I'd read in one before.

Is it my brain aging? Is it from smoking too much weed? Is it just my natural pace slowing down? Or is it that I'm out of practice? I think it's a little bit of all these things, to be honest, but I'm doing my best. My reading goal for the year is only 80 books, which is 20 less than usual, but even with giving myself that break I've got six books behind somehow. I'm determined to catch up!

But first, I want to write. Like a lot. I don't know how I always put it off until it drives me insane, but then when I do it it's such a relief it makes up for it.

So, first, editing. Then do what I actually want to do.

Noodles, Red Bull, & Camp Nano Prep

 I was supposed to reformat Digital Demon and do some research/studying last night (according to me, myself, and I) but I cancelled my own plans and spent the night writing instead. I semi-outlined my Camp NaNoWriMo project, which looks like it's going to be a dark contemporary about grief, trauma, and forest fires/wildfires. And then there's also the short story/novella project I wrote half of last night that I cannot even begin to describe.

Or I guess I can describe it by saying it's Zelda: Twilight Princess vibes with a dash of Jim Henson type goodness thrown in? And maybe a sort of multiverse twist, which isn't so much of a twist because multiverses and many-worlds stuff is popular in the mainstream right now. Or maybe not, depending on how Marvel's multiverse movies are getting responded to. But that's not people hating the multiverse; it seems like the multiverse stuff in Dr. Strange was most of what people liked about it, aside from Wanda stans being Wanda stans. The truth is people just want it executed in a certain way.

All I know is I'm 6k words in and this story is cray-cray. I have a title for the Camp Nano novel but I'm not sharing it, and I only have a working title for the fantasy novella right now. But I have to go keep writing that.

I'm drinking Red Bull and listening to Crumbs by Rebecca Black, and I will probably spend the entire night on this. I'm 100% okay with that, though. It has an evil talking sword and lizard people! Did I mention the lizard people?!

Yeah, I'm #TeamReptoid all the way. Abduct me, aliens!

At some point tonight when this Red Bull has fueled a couple thousand words and I have scrounged up some beef Mr. Noodles I will post another blog, because for some reason I'm back on my blogging kick. Literally nobody uses or reads Blogger anymore as far as I know, except maybe for porn, but then, humans will use anything for porn, so I guess that's not new.

And maybe, MAYBE, if things go well, I will be able to post a quote from one of these WIPS later.

NaNoWriMo Once More

 Finally. FINALLY. It is November.

I'm not going to lie, I had no idea whether or not I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, but of course, here I am. It seems I can't resist the siren song of a fresh, shiny new idea. And NaNoWriMo always makes me nostalgic. It's comforting and familiar and nostalgic and honestly just what I need right now. I haven't written in weeks and I can't keep trying to force myself to edit with no results, so my approach needs to change.

I'm hoping that enjoying a familiar, fun writing challenge and writing a new standalone this month will help me get out of this weird personal funk I've been in and help with my recent bout of stubborn writer's block.

In this case writer's block is kind of code for 'heavy depressive episode' but that's just life. Weirdly enough everyone I know is dreading late fall and winter because of seasonal depression but I like early winter when it all feels fresh and clean and everything is coated in snow and ice, the frost is beautiful to me and just freshens everything up. I'm hoping it will help once it gets colder.

Also my NaNo project this year is THE FIRST INSTINCT an MM enemies to lovers romance about a bounty hunter and a criminal in the near-future/semi-futuristic setting of Belltower City, in the year 2035.

I'm kind of picturing it at least visually as being like the Minority Report tv show. It only got one season, but I liked the balance between future and present tech, fashion, etc. It's futuristic, but not insanely so, or in a corny way. It's that whole 'fifteen minutes into the future' approach. And I'm doing a Scooby-Doo type mystery where the baddie tries to pass as a spooky scary monster! I guess it's Scream by the way of Minority Report and Scooby-Doo.

I'll post more tomorrow when I have an actual wordcount and stuff, but in the meantime, the main characters names are Reese Hamilton and Yosef. Yosef has no last name yet, but that shall be remedied.

The One Where I Get Anxiety From Everything & I Play Tomb Raider About It Instead of Coping

I think I've neglected this blog enough for the year. I've also been neglecting my personal diary, so there's enough of that to go around, but tonight I'm saying no more, and I am going to update both!

I have seriously been slacking off lately. My work has gone untouched while I play more Tomb Raider than I have any right to. I bought Rise and Shadow so I've been running through them both for the first time. I love Rise most, it's got the sturdiest writing and I think the world is more open. Shadow is fun though, it's got beautiful puzzles and more challenging tombs, although some of them have wonky spots in them. I also enjoy the more emotional moments between Lara and Jonah. She's been bottling up her angst for an installment or two and seeing it all pile up and break out is amazing.

The first game is still my favorite and always will be, though. It felt the most emotionally complex and grounded at the same time, even with the samurai zombies and stuff. I feel like we've never understood Lara and seen inside her mindset as much as we did in the first game. In Rise and Shadow she's bad-ass, sure, but she's also more withdrawn and it's hard to really get into her mind even with her journal entries.

I'm not going to play video games tonight until much later, though, because I'm determined as all hell to get in a round of editing on Force tonight. I only need to update and clarify a few things but I've pushed back the release date so many times and now it's ten days away so it needs a bit more brushing up before I finally put it out.

For those of you who don't follow, Force is book/novella 1 in my Superhero High serial that I recently announced. The Goodreads page is up, and it's got the placeholder cover and a cool blurb, as well as a bit more information. The proposed release date this time is on the 12th of this month, and it's making me majorly anxious because I'm not ready, never mind the book itself. I know it's good, but release is making me antsy. What if nobody reads it?! What if everybody reads it?! What if there's a huge gaping problem or plot hole I'm skipping over because I'm too close to it? And this is why I should stop neglecting my journal; it causes me to build up way too much anxiety!

I'm going to go do some self-care and get my emotional and mental state in check, now, but that said you should definitely check out the Force page on Goodreads I linked above and add it to your TBR!

Thanks for reading. :3

In The Belly of The Voodoo Machine

Title from Hades Pleads by Parker Millsap...

I'm staying in bed all day today in order to edit Dreamseeker and try to draft (or mostly draft) book 2, Dreamsinger. I think it will be good to take a break from my current novel WIP today and draft a novella, plus I've wanted to update the front- and back-matter of book 1 for a long while!

Book 2 is a rock star romance AND it has a human protagonist who serves in a damsel distress role a lot, so it's a lot different than book 1 and it will be a lot of fun to write. I still have to finish glossing over book 1, though, and I'm dragging my feet.

I've already had way too much coffee and tea today and I've been pigging out on potato scallop and baked ham. I played a little Fallout earlier and I'll probably play more tonight, but for now I'm cooped up in my room avoiding writing to blog. I also really want to read a lot today, but I can't let myself be sucked into some good book before I work on some of my own. My output for the last week has been shameful and I have to wrangle February back on track, productivity-wise.

Lately I started binging The Good Place and it's hilarious, but it's also made me cry a couple times. Definitely an amazing show. I already knew the season 1 plot twist before I went in and I still enjoyed it immensely as I saw it pulled off. I highly recommend it! I love afterlife stories so I wish I had started it sooner, but I saw a bunch of people in the BoJack subreddit ranting and raving about it during the BoJack finale threads (because they used similar plot devices but in opposite ways) and I had BoJack hangover from that shotgun blast of an ending to what is probably the best show ever, so I started The Good Place to help distract me a little...

Now I really am going to stop ranting and raving about TV shows and stuff and go write my damn book. Because I am a capable author who promised himself he'd make 2020 his bitch...

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.

How Long It Took To Write Each Book + Wordcounts! (How Do You Write So Fast?)

So today I thought it would be interesting to write about the books I've written and how long the process took for each one. Not all of these are published, and I'm only counting novellas, collections, and novels - not individual short stories.

I have a fairly quick writing process; I take my initial spark or idea and come up with a few loose scenes, and usually the ending of the book. Then I create a character sheet with every character, a brief description of their looks and personality, and an outline for the book. Drafting itself takes around two or three days for a novella, and around fifteen to thirty days for a full-length novel. Editing can take days or months, depending on the manuscript.

I attribute my fast writing to my detailed outlining strategies, which I developed after reading about how authors like Amanda Hocking and Rachel Aaron outline, and try to emulate the attitudes of writers like Jennifer L. Armentrout, who write for 6 to 8 hours a day when working on a book.

It should be noted I've been writing stories and starting books since I was twelve, but didn't actually finish a novel until I was seventeen, so I did have plenty of writing practice and time to figure things out before I actually began to finish things.

So, here's all the books I've written, their wordcounts, and their writing lengths, in the order I wrote them in. The wordcounts aren't exact - rounded up or down to the nearest thousandth.

* = published

Stars Full of Lies:
Wordcount: 48,000 words.
Writing Time: 27 days.

(Note; this is my first book, and also the only book I wrote without an outline. Both those things show in the manuscript.)

Demon Moon:
Wordcount: 25,000 words.
Writing Time: approx. 14 days.

*The Lilac Jones Adventures:
Wordcount: 17,000 words.
Writing Time: 2 to 3 days per story.

Blood of Midnight:
Wordcount: 52,000 words.
Writing Time: approx. 20 days.

Shadows of Ourselves:
Wordcount: 73,000 words.
Writing Time: 14 days.

(Note; this is both my longest book to date and also, in my opinion, my best. I'm editing it for publication now, and the fact that it was fun to write definitely made the process faster. I highly recommend writing books that are as fun for you as they are your readers.)

*Things We Saw At Midnight:
Wordcount: 13,000 words.
Writing Time: 1 day.

(Note; I was able to write this in one day for lots of odd reasons. I'd been awake for two days, was stoned out of my mind, and had more caffeine in my system than is probably healthy. I don't recommend any of this, especially not the part where I smoked a bunch of pot -drugs, even ones as relatively harmless as weed, are not integral or even truly beneficial to the creative process- but I admittedly had a lot of fun writing this and think it's some of my strongest work.)

*Frenzy:
Wordcount: 15,000 words.
Writing Time: 2 days.

*Souls of Salt & Seawater:
Wordcount: 32,000 words.
Writing Time: 17 days.

*Rage:
Wordcount: 16,000 words.
Writing Time: 5 days.

So there you have it. I highly recommend Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k for fast writing advice, especially if you want to draft quickly without sacrificing quality or artistic vision.

Fast drafting is about accepting that your first draft isn't just allowed to be bad, but that, to a certain degree, it exists to be. It's supposed to suck, in parts. A lot, sometimes. Editing exists for a reason, and is both fun and revolutionary for any manuscript.

As I mentioned above, I drink a lot of coffee when I'm writing. An unhealthy amount, even. I also make sure to drink a lot, if not more, water. 9 times out of 10, if my writing is interrupted, it's because I need another drink or I have to pee.

I also sometimes smoke pot, although I'm trying to do that a bit less. It can help with anxiety and distraction sometimes, but more often than not it puts you to sleep. I definitely work best while sober, so I don't really think this bolsters more creativity or work ethic, it's just something I do from time to time.

Mostly I put my fast writing times down to a few things:

1) Outlines.

My outlines have saved me more than once. Winging it can be fun, but going into your novel with a guide, structured to make the story the most exciting, fleshed-out, and intelligent it can be before I even write the first paragraph is always helpful. My outlines range from highly, highly detailed, to just one sentence per scene, and I always give myself permission to switch things up and introduce new elements while drafting. Your outline shouldn't restrict you, rather, it gives you more room to play around where it really matters.

2) Butt in Chair.

• Sit down. Open Scrivener. Stare at my outline.
• Put on my 8Tracks playlist. Scroll through my current projects Pinterest board.
• Do not look at Facebook or Twitter. Do not go on Tumblr.
• Write your damn book. You want it, you have to work for it. It's as simple and as difficult as that.

3) Dedication.

I dedicate myself to my writing and my current project. Don't start something unless it's something you care about or know that you can at least have some fun with. If you're bored or frustrated you're less likely to work on things and finish them. I'll admit some of my titles, like Rage and Souls of Salt & Seawater, have been harder to write than others. But that said, for the most part, writing should be fun. It should be intoxicating and enjoyable. If it isn't, you need to change things up until it is again.

4) Enjoyment.

Make your writing fun. Look up some graphics tutorials on Tumblr or Deviantart and make images and edits for your books. Posts quotes of WIPS to social media and make 8Tracks playlists for your projects or certain characters.

The plus side of playlists is you can listen as you write. I made one for Shadows of Ourselves (particularly for my main character, Sky) just tonight;

Listen here: http://8tracks.com/jinx-king/tiny-blonde-mess

Why do I recommend things like this? Because if you think like an actual fan of your novels would, you'll enjoy writing them more, and utilising multimedia to foster your creativity will give you a richer experience with what you're trying to create.

There are so many things you can do to make writing more fun, more fast, and more effortless. It's not supposed to feel like a complete chore. So there you go, that's how I write so fast.