But There Are Good Days Too

Last night I complained about marketing being too much work. I complained about writing being hard. I wrung my hands in frustration because every word I put on the page felt like I was stepping in mud, and it was weighing me down, and I'd never be able to finish another book.


Then, I took a break. Counted to five. Opened my wip. And I wrote 6000 words, almost without stopping.


There are good days.


You can power through writers block.


It just takes a lot of willpower. And lots of coffee. And maybe the chapter you put down isn't your best, but it has something special to it, some little flair you love, that's keeping you excited for when the time to edit comes. Sometimes that can be enough.


Rewards are little things when you write all day. We work alone. It's stressful, and tiring, and sometimes the best feeling in the world is knowing you hit the 6k mark, and that tomorrow might be a little easier.

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!

Thinking Your Way Back

Earlier I was reading old posts from January, which is only two months ago but feels eons ago. It was eons ago, because time is relative and time doesn't exist, but I'm not here to blow your mind or lose my thought process talking about weird time jumps. There are shitty B movies that can do that for you better than I ever could.

I'm here to talk about thinking my way back to when I felt, for a while, like things were really looking up. I wasn't in the greatest place, but the world still felt brimming with possibility.

And with my birthday coming up, I've been freaking out - you know, that old paralyzing anxiety about aging and death, right? And I had a bit of a breakdown for a month or so, there. I'm back now.

I'm not going to lie and say I'm fine when just the other night I was talking about mental illness and suicidal thoughts, but I feel like I worked some stuff out of my system and I'm in a slightly better place after a day of reflection and calmness.

I'm still stressed about nineteen million things, but I can't change any of it, I know I can't, so I have to stop blaming myself for things I have no power over and just take it as it comes, because that, how I react to it, is something I have power over. I'm gonna use that power.

So that's how I'm feeling today. I'm dealing with school stuff (stressful) because after easter I have to go and get my diploma. I was originally going to go for an adult diploma but I think I'm going for my GED or equivalency now, because I know if I go back to that school not only will I not learn anything I need to, but I'll also A) have a relapse with my mental illness and B) get into a fistfight with one of the various racist, sexist, and homophobic students there. I'm not even joking - I have an inability not to start a fight if I see a wrongdoing. But basically I just need to not go back into the Canadian public school system, ever.

I started outlining a new project the other night and I have a cover for it, it's gonna come out a few weeks before Shadows of Ourselves, I think. It's longer than a novella but probably not a novel. I think it should be around 35 thousand words, but I'd like to stretch it to 40k or so if I can. I know there's enough story there, but I refuse to add words unless they're needed for the story to function, so we'll see.

It has the best cover of any of my books, ever, in my opinion. Better than the cover for a (possible) sequel to Shadows of Ourselves, which nobody has seen yet. Better than the cover of Maelstrom, which no one has seen yet. I just love it. Not sharing yet, but I love it.

But the book has a Pinterest board, and you can find that here for some glimpses about it. You should also check out the boards for my other books, and I dunno, maybe follow me? For reasons. For science.

And, for fun, some facts about the book:

• It's inspired by magical girl animes.
• And some mythology I love but feel is underused.
• It's paranormal, and the main romance is a lesbian one.
• It's standalone for now but there's room to tell other stories in the world that would also stand on their own.
• MONSTERS.
• A private academy.
• Long lost family members.
• Biracial main character! (Kat is white and Japanese.)
• FANCY BALL GOWNS GALORE.
• Did I mention the monsters?
• Romance!
• Slightly odd romance - or just more realistic? I'm going for a kind of Rainbow Rowell angle on the romance, so while there's a bit of romance genre cheese, for the most part the romance develops in kind of lowkey, average, everyday ways.
• Dragonflies.
• Magic weapons.

So yeah. I'm excited. I'm taking a break from SOO editing to draft this over the next four days, then I edit Shadows in around a week or two, edit this, do my copy edits on Shadows, and then put them both out around the same time. Maybe a week apart?

I have no clue, nothing's official right now, but I'm excited.