SO very busy

Yup been writing like mad. I have 18 stories going through editing, adding chapter headings, formatting and cover creation. Which feels good as you can imagine. Only thing is in today’s world you need to put in disclaimers, spice level and trigger warnings. Something else I have to figure out along with blurbs and teasers for social media. it is really never ending. Honesty the easier part is the writing. Even the editing isnt so bad since I use two different computers for it with two different word programs. If I could get the online editors like Prowriter or grammerly to work on my old as the hills machines it would be better but we do what we do right?

Now I will be using my other writing blog to post up first pages of everything as I want to pea interest. Both in my older series and the new ones I have started. After going through and condensing the over 20K worth of files I then started placing work into series One bad habit I had was making back ups in new folders instead of just over writing the old ones. It made finding things oh so much fun, not.

So stay tuned. i might even post up full first chapters, depending on the stories.

Now as for the series. I have a lot of new Guardians stories. They are set in both Nashua and Barrie with a few in the background for Manchester. I will be putting up a reading order on the stories for that very involved universe soon. I realized that having over twenty stories set in the same universe it might be wise to give a reading order. Never mind all the pending ones. That universe I made is quite a bit bigger than I intended way back at the turn of the millennium when I wrote Harry’s first short story. Who knew that a little halloween story would go so far right?

Now the new series I have are both filled with erotic elements, so not to be read by kids. Games of Rebirth as stories based very loosely on video games I have played over the years. A big theme in them is your character coming back to life after all. So I started tales that just poured out. There are three in that series that as mostly finished. Now they are not a shared world really. The thing that ties them together is the fact that the main characters are reborn into a world that is not the one they died in. These are an adult looking at the fact that being reborn into a healthy and strong body is going to do more than run around doing quests. It is not the main foucs of the stories of course but I get to explore a lot of themes that I don’t in my other work.

The second new series is Angel City stories. A fictional west coast series filled with beings living under the radar. shifters, weres, fae of all kinds, living vampires, gods, demons and more. I have four in various stages on this series. Not as erotic as the Games series it is still filled with lots of spicey parts, so no kids.

As I work through my old backlog of story ideas new series will come about. In fact I have three romance tales all set near the sea that I am trying to come up with a good series name for. Never mind my Angels series, Fantasies in fur and the others.

I have noticed the older I get and lets admitit I am almost sixty, the more I add romance to my stories. Not because it might help them sell, but because that is where the stories go. Yes I would love it if one of these series took off and sold a few hundred if not thousands of copies, but for you ten or so faithful readers You can expect a lot more to read. Thanks again for being aptient with me after I had those years of sickness and lack of drive.

Arrgghhh what to do

Been tossing between four WIP and paintin today. Sometimes it is hard to settle down to work on one thing. Now I know that can be a sign of ADHD but well I don’t haave that. Last summer proved I can sit down and focus but something about winter tends to have me bouncing from story to story and from painting to drawing and back. is it the short days? I don’t think so. I think it is the pain that comes with this time of year. As a klutz who has broken ,tore, sprained, strained etc many things I never know what will hurt when I get up in the moring. Today for an example my right palm is giving me issues. Now that could be the delayed result of the pins that I had put anin and taken out 12 year ago. i know relly well that old injuries come back to haunt you decades later.

It has made for an annoying day today. All I know is that today when I grabbed the banister goingoupstairs it hurt!. So very annoying. Makes some things hard to concentrate on, like typing. I put on my compression gloves for the trouble with my left knuckle earlier so just slid on the other one and hope it works.

Once I can focus better Ill go over to my Books by blog and post up some excerpts from the four WIP. They working titles are Whispers of the Dead, a paranormal romance, And the story Tells it all, urban fantasy, SJ and the Not So Haunted Town another urban fantasy and Hiding in Plan Sight, again an urban fantasy. The last threee are a parto f hte Guardians stories and the first I think will be in another series.

As for the painingsi generally post them over on Deviant Art, instagram and if I am feeling brave, Reddit. Who knows. Should be interesting.

Writing and phones

You would think a cellphone would not be helpful with writing but damn it is useful. Today while waiting for the during her appointment I opened the note ap and wrote down about 200 words in a new idea for a space opera kind of tale. Now no idea if orcwhen I’ll do more, after all I have three UF and one PR in the worksxright now, but it is an interesting idea for me.

What is cool about owning two older phones is while I dont have service on them ( a story for another post) i can use wifi that is avato do searches as needed. This has upped my productivity by letting me open research windows on one and use the other for help with spelling or get translations when I add in things like latin chants or garlic vows or even indigenous names for characters. So wi recommend dont toss your old phones, use them!

Well damn

I managed to get all but one of the tales I wrote this summer published and they seem to be selling. Which is a great thing. I have one more that I’m going to hold onto till I get a few more of that type and I’ll put them into a collection.

The problem is that my dell laptop de ided to breakdown. The battery has been pretty dead for a while and it only worked plugged in. Well the cable went kaput. Mid sentence while I was working on a new novel. Which as you can imagine I let out many nasty words.

I got one of the two novels transferred over to the hp but the 1500 words I wrote on the other dud not transfer. Yes I let out many a curse.

But the good thing about a hubby who is tech inclined is that he pulled the Dell hard drive so we can pull my work off the the dell till mummy royalty payments come in and I can get the new cable and battery.

Now it means that instead of working more on SJ and the not so haunted town I’ll be working on And the Story tells it all eith Ellie. Here is hoping I have no more issues. I mean old machines are good but damn I hate fighting my machines

Returning from space?

No, not really. Just from computer hell. When you need to hijack the hubby’s tablet to post, well you do what you do.

The reason I’m back is well I have a ton of new tales going up for sale. From the forth Loralil book, to novels set in the Guardian of the Gate city universe to a whole new stand alone novel and much more. It has been a busy few months with over a half million words written since June.

Other things have been series of art that I have done. Like most things I do a story works its way into it. At some point i will put words and images together for people to enjoy, but for now they are only art, which can be seen on Instagram, Twitter, and tumblr.

i also have digital art\videos that I have posted up on tiktok. So I’ve been busy.

Once I get used to this work around you can expect excerpts and updates here and on the other blogs that specifically are meant for them. I had even gone back to posting on deviant art before my phones decided they would let me have the space for the ap.

Now just at the moment Draft2digital has started a beta on taking ebooks into paperbacks. And yes I’m diving in. While I have to go back, add in tables of contents and in some cases more story\stories I will try to get all my novels and collections into paperback format. It will take time of course because I have a lot of titles.

Now you might ask why do it? Besides always wanting to hold actual physical copies of my work, there is still a larger market for paperbacks over ebooks. So I will be working many, many hours to bring them to you, if you decide to buy.

So for those of you who stayed tuned in thanks! Watch for new and fabulous work from the old mad writer Doon.

Being drafted

No, not into the military, but as an editor. Now while I know very well my own writing needs a second, third and forth set of eyes to help me polish what I have scribble, typed and then sweated over, it seems that a lot of people want me to be their editor.

From the very first chat room I entered till today it seems like I get a lot of requests for me to just look over something someone has written. From the letter being sent out or the resume to their proposals and yes even their stories. Which I generally don’t mind doing at all.

Now depending on what I am given I will either read it through and toss off content or pacing suggestions to outright give the whole spelling and grammar fixes that every person under thirty seems to need.

Today I was asked pleadingly to look over my youngest daughter’s art proposal and fix any errors. The kid is great at getting her imagery across, but has trouble with spelling, grammar, correct version of words, (you know their instead of they’re), punctuation and of course formatting.

Something everyone seems to forget is getting the formatting right. Paragraph breaks are essential, almost as much as making sure you have the right commas and other punctuation. If you receive what basically is one giant paragraph (never mind those who do one giant sentence) most of us will just go, nope, not going to read it.

I have been pointing this out to friends and family who want me to edit for well, almost thirty years. Yeah seems like a long time doesn’t it? Maybe it is all the reading I do, but I know how pacing should work in most forms of writing. In short stories and novels pacing can make or break your story. So yeah I tell anyone who asks me to read their stuff, even if it is just to review, how their pacing feels to me.

Sometimes of course I just can’t help the person asking. If I can’t get through a full page then I hand it back. It isn’t that the writing is bad, it is that I need to be able to deal with the pacing, the character or the emotion of the first page. Some writers, thankfully only a handful, just don’t understand how to hook a reader in.

As you writers know hooking your writer is especially important. If you don’t grab them you won’t keep them. Now obviously I can hook some readers, but not enough to have much of a following. One of these days I will of course.wr

Well I’m back

Yup. After a very long time my muse has returned from her extended world tour to help me with writing again. Took her bloody long enough you say? Well yeah. When I go back and look at the amount of work I had been putting out is it really a wonder that I had stalled out?

Things have started to look up for me. I have been working for the past week on the fourth Loralil book. Yup the forth one. I am 25K into the first very rough draft and going. This one is hopefully going to end up a wee bit less dark. I mean I know I say her stuff is my dark fantasy, but damn the stuff I put that elf through right? This book is all about her healing and learning to accept people in her life again.

After losing all those she did in the first three it is totally understandable that it took her a while to let anyone in. There are some fun little bits, hints of what she will become in this book. She has taken a companion and part time lover and in this book I hope to show a less action focused character. I have written in some nice little scenes of domesticity, but rest assured there will still be a lot of action. After all there are slavers and bandits who are just drooling to get at those elusive grey elvin healers after all.

Jason is back and enjoying himself to the max. He has grown up a bit and learned that things can move slowly and still be good. He learns lessons about not being quite as kick ass as he believed. I haven’t decided if we will see more of Levy and Karleen other than off stage so to speak. They are growing older and adventuring is really meant for those who are younger.

No Loralil hasn’t decided to up and go adventuring yet, but there is plenty to keep her active up on Tal’shin Mountain as you will learn. So my heroine is kicking butt, taking names and making new friends. And living a simple life in between.

Expect more posts as I feel like it both on this blog and my others. I have been busy doing art and will post them up, though they are all ready up on Deviant Art and Instagram.

Also I have discovered Tiktok and you can find me over there. I have posted videos from my nature walks, videos made of my photographs and art and even some very bad cosplay type ones. Something I hope to do at least once a day with a few characters  I have in my head.

I hope you are all well and that you have avoided Covid. With my youngest daughter going into her last year of high school. my middle daughter going back to work at Honda and my eldest making me a grandmother in February I am both excited and worried as hell. We will see what the rest of this year gives us and hope against hope that 2021 will be a much better year, right?

poem video: Leaves

Yup another of my older videos up today. I did love doing those on my old netbook. Thinking of putting up my old book trailers once I am caught up but we will see. Here you go, enjoy

Audible poetry, A Piece of You

I have a bunch more of these that will keep going up but for today

 

Audio drabble: Forest of Shadows

Next in my audio drabble series. Click on the link to hear me reading it