Swwweeeeet.

Sweetness is coming.  Like, ferr realll.

After five drafts, lots of red wine, and even more Cheetos to help me through the dark times, I've finally finished a new novel.  Sweet - a paranormal romance (light on the paranormal, heavy on the angst relationship issues) about a fairy, an incubus, and all the reasons best friends should/shouldn't fall in love.

The fully edited and polished version will be available on Kindle and in print somewhere about mid-August.  But if you're impatient like meeee, you can read a slightly more raw version for free here on FictionPress right now.  The free version will (*frowny face*) go buh-bye when the paid one comes out.  But, yes, of course there will be free days to nab the final kindle version later on.

I leave you with an image of the brand new cover...  And then I go curl up on the couch and finish watching The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All, because it's been a hellish day and only drama regarding cute men and red wine and yet more Cheetos and THE THOUGHT OF A NEW NOVEL will make me feel human again.

Sweet

For the last three years I've been working on the same story on and off.  It started off as a short story, about 8k, and altogether unsatisfying.  Over the last year especially, I've been rewriting it over and over, letting it get longer and more meaningful (to me, at least).  But lately I feel like I'm at that point where I've more or less lost my ability to judge the whole thing.  Are my characters shallow?  Wimpy?  And how shallow is too shallow by the way?

Clearly this means it's time for second opinions, which means posting it up on my favorite site, FictionPress.com.  Years ago, I was there all the time, writing and reading, but I fell away from it as most of my stories seemed to be stalling out and never getting finished.  A lot of the people have changed now, but the site itself remains essentially the same, and I'm exciting to get back to it now that I'm writing seriously/happily again.  And of course I can't wait to dig through and find some new stories to follow.

The story I'm posting is Sweet, a novella (novel?) about an incubus and a fey with a self-destructive relationship.  It's set in the fictional city of New Berlin, which is where most of my new work is set.  New Berlin is every bit as toxic as Connor and David's on-again, off-again romance.  A glittering metropolis with a rotten core.

You can read it here:  https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3232792/1/Sweet

I'm expecting to post two chapters a week, as fast as I can rewrite them yet again.  :)

I can't even begin to say how glad I am to be able to bury myself in this story right now.  My mother has come through her surgery pretty well, but there is so much work that lies ahead of her now, and ahead of me.  Sometimes art really does save.