Wishing You a Blessed Samhain

We're finally down to three days before Halloween, my favorite holiday of the year, which at first seemed like it was never going to arrive.  And then during the last week, as Chrismas decorations suddenly starting popping up like some heinous black magic in stores, the end of October became a freight train intent on splattering across the tracks any unfortunate souls caught off their game.

Including me, of course, who had intended all year to have another novel out by early October.  But sometimes the thing you're writing takes a lot more time than you thought it would, and sometimes the thing you're writing just runs off the tracks and explodes (or gets splattered).  There's been a bit of both during the last year.  So while the pipeline has got stuff in the works, it's not quite ready to leak into our drinking water yet.

This is possibly too many metaphors even for me.

So to all my readers (I know you're out there, lurking under rocks, but it's okay because it's that time of the year), my sincere apologies.  I'm writing my brains out right now, and if you're following the New Berlin series, you're going to see some familiar faces from around Chicanery soon.  Angels, incubi, some dark fey, and a few other creatures are cluttering up the pages of my first draft pile.  They just need a little merciless surgery, and then some further botox and nip/tucking before they're ready to face you.

On a further note, Sweet is going to be free on Kindle in honor of Samhain, one last gift and one last harvest before the long, dark night.  You've probably already read it, in which case thank you!  But if you know anybody who'd like to snag a copy, they can get it now through sunset of November 1st.  Okay, midnight actually.  KDP refuses to let me run promotions based on sunset-to-sunset.  But hey, such are the trials of life as a half-assed pagan.

Now it's back to work for me, so I can pin all my hopes on finishing something in time for Yule.

Forever love, and may you all enjoy a blessed Samhain!
LF

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.