De-blog

I've spent sixteen hours typesetting the paperback and formatting the ebook for In The Stars Part II today. Am I inefficient? Maybe. Or perhaps it's down to the 210k, 572 page, fifty-five chapter leviathan I spawned... (yes, you read that correctly) Better still (or worse yet), this is only the second half of the story of In The Stars , which spans a year in the life of The Circle - the nine characters around which the Hiding Behind The Couch series revolves. The full story consists of the 105 chapters below - around 1,150 pages and something like 384,000 words. Which is, of course, why I'm releasing it not only in two volumes , but also as twelve separate episodes . Each episode is released in the month in which the related zodiac sign falls, so the first six episodes are already available (at time of writing). It doesn't have much else to do with astrology, to be honest, although the themes of religious beliefs, science, fate and fortune are key. I...

So, the thing is this. I got to the end of Checking Him Out , and it was all ready for submission. And, as all writers will know, it's a bit difficult to... ...just let go. I had plenty of other stuff to be getting on with, but I was watching the forums for Love's Landscapes . As I explained a couple of posts back , members of the MM Romance Group submitted "Dear Author" letters, detailing the story they wanted to be written, and authors claimed these prompts, which is their agreement to write that story. Unfortunately, circumstances mean that some authors have to pull out, and their prompt is then 'open' again for someone else to claim. On this particular evening, I was home alone, when two prompts became available at the same time. One was a sports-related prompt, which I had ideas for, but the prompter was hinting heavily at baseball, and I know next to bugger all about baseball (played with bats, and has that weird ballpark organ music, that g...

Checking Him Out is back from round #1 with my editor*, and she's pretty bloody awesome, that editor. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a bolshy, stubborn author who digs her heels in. Luckily she seems to know how to handle me, as I've come out the other side smiling and happy - a very different outcome to the one I had recurring dreams about two nights ago! *Addendum: it is now edited and with the proofreaders! There was also an interesting plot hole that she spotted, and it took me about ten minutes of sitting, staring at the screen, saying, "What the hell is she on about?" over and again, before the penny dropped. It's fixed now, and I've got to say that right at this point in time I think this is the best story I've ever written. It's probably just a post-writing / post-editing moment of euphoric bias, because I love my Hiding Behind The Couch series beyond the capacity for rational thought. However, Checking Him Out was a ne...

I've just submitted two stories to my publisher. That sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? And you know what? It is! But this isn't any old publisher. It's not a traditional publisher, nor an indie publisher. It's an online community endeavour to publish a massive anthology of around 200 stories. Do not think for one minute that this makes it anything less than professional. The support from the moderators, the editors, proofreaders - they are truly incredible, and the community itself really is one on its own. About The M/M Romance Group The community I'm talking about is the M/M Romance Group on Goodreads , and I'm a member. That feels a bit like coming out, because if you're unfamiliar with the terminology, "M/M" is male/male, and it's a genre I'm still learning about, even though I've discovered that my first novel, Champagne (2004, 2014), is, in fact, a M/M romance. However, much of what I write falls under the umbrell...