I Really, Really Hate This Heat
And by rights I can’t complain—I work in central A/C and knock wood it’s been functioning. I don’t have it nearly as bad as everyone who works outside or who doesn’t have central A/C.
But it’s still oppressive as hell. This continuous high pressure isn’t doing my mood, my joints, or my sinuses any good, and I’m trying to get High Tide churned out when what I really want to do is hide in a dark room until all of this is over.
And that keeps getting yanked away. We were supposed to have temps in the 90s on Monday and Tuesday with some rain. The forecast is now back up to triple digits with no relief in sight until the middle of the month, if then (the only relief is that temps are supposed to top out at 100°F on 8/14, and that can easily change). So yeah, I’m not in the best of all possible moods.
It didn’t help that I went in for my follow-up with the oral surgeon (I had a gum biopsy done two weeks ago for some persistent gum irritation) and they still don’t have the report back from the pathologist. Neither the oral surgeon nor I think that this is anything serious—based on the placement of the gum irritation and my wacky immune system it’s far more likely that I’m having a reaction to the dental cement used to anchor the two crowns on those teeth—but it also means that I don’t know for sure. So that’s hovering at the back of my mind along with creeping dread of what our electrical bill will look like this month and other general financial concerns and yeah, not the most conducive environment for writing.
But I’m doing it anyway because that is my job and I need to keep my readers entertained. So Episode Three of High Tide will come out tomorrow on Vella, I’ll continue to edit Crystal Blade so that I can send it off to the editor, and I’ll keep glaring at the sun.
Creative Decisions
High Tide Episode 2: And Hello To You, Too is now available at Kindle Vella. You know the drill.
I realized yesterday that I kinda made a mistake. I jumped from a complex fantasy romance with bleak backstories, intrigue, and suspense (Crystal Blade) directly into another complex fantasy romance with bleak backstories, intrigue and suspense (High Tide), and after the last three years my brain kinda needs a break from so much sturm und drang and bleak backstories, please.
So I’ve decided to lighten things just a little with the main trio for High Tide. One of the members is a sunny cinnamon roll in human(oid) form, another is grumpy and sarcastic but will do anything for his mates, and the third, to be honest, is a bit of a dork. But a nice dork who tries hard.
This creative decision being influenced by the second season of a certain show that just dropped on Amazon Prime is something I will neither confirm nor deny. All I will say is that art moves in mysterious—nay, ineffable—ways.
Rabbit Rabbit: August
Despite the fact that we have five more days of this hellacious heat I’m starting the month off feeling very chuffed, thank you very much. The pre-order for Crystal Blade is live at 99¢, I’ve posted the first episode of High Tide on Vella (before anyone gets upset lemme ‘splain—I’m releasing High Tide as a Vella serial novel, and when it’s done I’ll compile it and publish it as an ebook and print book. You can choose to read along, or you can wait for it to be published in late September, whichever you prefer), and my July Vella episode reads tripled from June so I should be getting a nice bonus.
I’m also going to kick off my official Patreon launch next week—I’ll have a Hidden Empire short story for all patrons, and higher levels will get free ebooks and free print books as they’re released. More on that once everything’s finalized.
The only sour note is that I can’t start on the audiobooks until this heat subsides. I’ll have to record in the master bath’s closet and it’s warm at the best of times. If I try to record in there now I will pass out from heat exhaustion. But they will be coming, I promise you that.
Aaaaand Crystal Blade Is Soup
Crystal Blade is officially done at a little over 95K, woohoo! I’ve set up a pre-order at Amazon and the official release date is August 29, 2023.
I feel very, very good about this. The story is a great mix of romance and intrigue, there are a nice number of spicy scenes, and I especially like the fact that Crystal hasn’t fallen into insta-love with all of her guys. Anton was the first, then Erik in this book, and her affection for Basil, Marco, and Fallon is teetering on the verge of love by the end of the book. Considering that it’s set in a world with elemental magic, Muses, and the whole “it takes three men to get a woman pregnant” thing, there’s still a sense of being rooted in reality, which pleases me.
While Crystal Blade is cooling I’m getting to work on High Tide today. I told my subconscious to work out the plot last night and I woke up with a rough outline that I can refine. I will give you two words: boarding party. Heh, heh, heh.
Oh, and I’m going to go see Barbie because I deserve a treat for finishing Crystal Blade, tra la.
Soon, Precious, Very Soon…
All of the remaining Crystal Blade episodes are now live on Kindle Vella. And there are two new spicy scenes so go check them out!
Sorry about the radio silence from this end. I have been doing my best to finish Crystal Blade with that toxic toad of a heat dome sitting on top of us, my ovaries are mounting a last-ditch attempt to make my life miserable (one of the joys of having PCOS—despite the fact that I am most definitely in menopause my cyst-covered ovaries can continue to make my life miserable for a good ten years as the damn cysts pop, causing all kinds of cramping pain. Whee), my mood swings have been epic, and I’ve also been cleaning the house piecemeal when I haven’t been working on a quilt for a friend. So yeah, blog posts have kinda been overlooked with all of that going on.
But I have maybe 1200 words more to go on Blade and it is officially soup. Since it’s in Vella I’m going to publish the remaining episodes once I finish the last chapter. That will start the thirty day clock on when I can take the story down and publish it, so I’m going to set up a pre-order on Amazon with delivery on August 29, let Blade cool while I get started on High Tide, and then I’ll start the editing process next week.
In re: the future adventures of Crystal and her men, I have a very rough outline for Crystal Reflection (Book 3) and an even rougher idea for Crystal Citadel (Book 4). Unfortunately can’t discuss either of them at the moment because it would create a huge spoiler for both books, but if this works out the way it should these stories will be extremely cool and set up the big conflict for Crystal Empress (Book 5). That wraps up the series, but I have the option of three spinoff series if I want to pursue them.
Stupid Weather
Crystal Blade Episode 37: The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly On the Plain is now live on Kindle Vella. You know the drill, petal.
And may I say that I am actually kinda impressed with myself? I already have Friday’s episode loaded and ready for release, I have a large chunk of Monday’s ep written, and by the actual end of the weekend I should have all of next week’s eps finished. I know I said on Monday that I wanted to have the entire book done by Saturday this week, but that was before I totaled up the remaining chapters and realized, ha ha, I’d blown past my original projected word count by about 11k. I’m having flashbacks to finishing Shadow of the Swan, whee…
So yeah, once I finish today’s chapter I’ll have five more chapters to go of approximately 3,500 words apiece. If I can work up the energy (not easy with this freaking heat dome squatting over Texas like a toxic toad) I could potentially have all of them done by next Wednesday.
Yeah, I hear you—why not Monday? Because I don’t want to write over the weekend. I really need those two days for cleaning and business tasks, not to mention plain old recharging. Because I am plain and old, and I need it.
Soon, My Precious. Soon…
As of tonight I hit my 3k/day writing word count for the first time since May 14 and I am approximately 17,507 words from the end of Crystal Blade. Once I finish the chapter I’m currently working on, I’ll have Act II finished and can start the frantic landslide of Act III. Each chapter is already outlined and ready to go, and all I have to do is stick the words into place.
And to my surprise everything is flowing remarkably smoothly. I don’t know if it’s just years of experience, the fact that this book has been pending for over a year, or what, but I’m not fighting the story anymore. In fact, it’s getting kinda fun again to work in this universe and pit Crystal against her family’s machinations. It’s also a lot of fun to salt hints and suggestions about things that will happen in books 3-5, so that readers will be able to read those books and think, “Oh, now I understand why she mentioned X back in Crystal Blade. Okay, that makes sense.”
It’s one of the underlying tenets of writing a series. You need to make sure the books as a whole are cohesive and relate to each other in some way. Also, readers love following breadcrumbs in a complicated plot and will love you for it if you drop enough to keep their appetite whetted.
I’m Back. Again.
Crystal Blade Episode 36: A Cousinly Talk is now live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, read, enjoy.
So where have I been for the last week or so? Well, basically I felt like absolute crap, had little to no energy, and wasn’t in any position to focus on writing. My guess is a viral sinus infection combined with a bunch of shit in the air pretty much knocking me on my ass.
So I gave myself permission to take the week off, rest, and only do stuff that I could do on autopilot; namely, finish reformatting all the titles that I’d pulled out of KU and publish them wide.
As of 7/7/23 every title that currently isn’t in KU (I’m still waiting on “Prelude to a Storm”‘s KU period to expire later this month) was published on Smashwords and Google Play. I’m currently waiting for Smashwords to review everything and pass it onto their Premiere Catalog which gets distributed to its partners. Once that happens, I’ll update my universal links for every book and then I’m pretty much wide for the duration.
To be honest, I’m glad I did it. I keep hearing from people still in KU that their payouts are continuing to drop despite Amazon raising the subscription price, plus there’s the whole mess of Amazon threatening to yank accounts when they find a KU title on a pirate site. As for me, I’m actually making about the same wide as I had in KU, plus I’m making additional money from Vella. So I’m not complaining.
In the meantime I have five more chapters to finish on Crystal Blade and it is done done done. If I get a move on I may be able to do that by EOB Saturday, I dunno (and yes, Susan, as soon as that’s done I’m pivoting to High Tide). I have to leave a Vella story up for thirty days after I publish the last episode, so once Blade is done I’ll set up a pre-order for it on Amazon for mid-August or so.
So it goes.
It’s the Little Achievements
Despite what I said yesterday, I was working on formatting Lady of Thorns today when it occurred to me to check the outside temps.
83°F. And tomorrow was supposed to be back in the nineties. I dropped what I was doing and headed out to the garage to do battle.
See, I’ve had a long-term problem with the driver’s side front door on my Mazda 3. I suspect it’s due to the fact that the driver’s side is the one that catches the full Texas sun in the afternoon, and that heat is degrading or damaging components. As a result the central locking button doesn’t always work, I can’t manually lock the door from the inside, and my Door Ajar light will come on and stay on no matter how hard I slam the door. I would have to manually lock the door from the outside to get the light to go off, and recently that hasn’t been working unless I stand there for a minute and lock/unlock/lock/unlock the door until the light finally goes off. I don’t want to leave the light on because that drains the battery over time, damaging it, so I’ve been putting the car in the garage where the driver’s side wouldn’t get roasted every afternoon.
Being my grandfather’s granddaughter, I looked up reasons for what was going on and found a couple of possible solutions. The easiest was to spray contact cleaner inside the little clamping mechanism that holds the door closed because the grease in it may be gooked up, stopping it from making contact when it closes and fooling the car’s computer into thinking that the door isn’t closed properly. So I did this (I also need to add some white lithium grease when I can find the tube of it, which is SITH), cleaned away the gunk that indeed came out of the mechanism, then got in the car and closed the door. The Door Ajar light stayed on, but when I hit the central locking button the door locks clunked solidly and the light went off.
That’s a step in the right direction, but it’s more of a bodge than a fix. So I got out my tools and carefully started taking off the door interior panel (there’s a recessed panel behind the handle that hides a screw. Wanna know the perfect tool for popping it off? A curved sculpting tool. You’re welcome). Got that off and various wires disconnected, then checked all of the wiring I could see. There were no obvious worn/melted parts, which was reassuring.
Then I followed a set of wires down to the side of the door near the clamping mechanism. The wires plugged into a round outlet that I assumed controlled the mechanism based on its location. I unplugged the wires, hit the outlet with more contact cleaner, then plugged the wires back in. Next I went around the door, found every contact I could find and cleaned them all with contact cleaner, then put the door back together.
Got in the car and closed the door gently. The Door Ajar light went off. I’m not absolutely sure that I fixed the problem and I still want to give that clamping mechanism a good coating of white lithium grease, but so far it’s holding. If I can nurse it through to this fall I’ll buy a new clamping mechanism and install that when it’s not quite so warm outside (even at 83°F I was dripping with sweat by the time I went back inside, and that was with the garage door open).
Firing on All Cylinders
Crystal Blade Episode 34: Oh, Oh, Oh, It’s Magic and Episode 35: Coda are now live on Kindle Vella.
Yeah, I know—two eps in one day? It’s because my publishing schedule has been thrown off this week. Normally I do M-W-F, but Ep 33 was published on Tuesday and I didn’t have Ep 34 ready by Wednesday, so you get a twofer today. You’re welcome.
Much as I would love to get the Two Thrones books hammered out this weekend and set live, I also have a buttload of cleaning that I really have to do now that the temps have dropped, plus I need to try and fix my driver’s side car door while the air is still tolerable in the garage. It’s times like these that I really wish I had the money to hire a PA and have them help me out with the formatting et al, but that is an achievement for another day.
Nicola Cameron Writes 