Category Archives: Hurricane Warning
It’s Good To Finish Things
High Tide Episode 12: Aftermath is now live on Kindle Vella. And lo, thou canst read it at thy leisure.
We have rain on the way and I cannot wait. I love writing when it’s raining outside—I even have a rain sounds track on iTunes so that I can play that when I’m writing something that doesn’t need a specific musical track.
Even better, the quilt project for a friend is 99% done. I now have to turf it to someone who can quilt it on a longarm machine, then I get it back, put on the binding, and send it out. I don’t know about you, but unfinished projects nag at me so I always feel really good when I get one done (or almost done in this case).
Once I get back from the quilt store, I’m settling in here to work on High Tide (which is almost 25% done) and Hurricane Warning (still outlining the bulk of it, but I think I’ll post the unedited version of the first chapter Real Soon Now). And this weekend I’m going to finish setting up my Shopify store where people can buy bundled ebooks directly from me. I want to do signed paperbacks as well, but that’s going to have to wait until later when I have the spoons for it.
Best of all, now that the weather has cooled off and I won’t sweat to death in my bedroom closet I can start working on the audiobooks, yay!
And It’s Monday
High Tide Episode 11: Divine Etiquette is now live on Kindle Vella. You know the drill, go forth and enjoy it.
The weekend was most productive—I got some ads tweaked, worked on a quilting project for a friend, continued outlining Hurricane Warning (I know how I want it to begin and I know how I want it to end—it’s the middle part that’s always the challenge), and poked a bit at the paranormal Vella serial I want to start posting once High Tide and Hurricane Warning are done. Devil’s Deal will be a true serial, designed to be read over a cup of coffee, and the leads are a rather dishy Prince of Hell who has a wee gambling addiction, a witch/data miner who gets catapulted into PI status when the investigator she worked for gets killed, and the blondest, snottiest angel you could imagine (think Sam Reid in Lestat mode, only with a British accent). And I’m not restricting myself to Heaven and Hell—this story can wander into any pantheon or afterlife you can imagine. This is gonna be fun…
Even better, the heat has finally broken here in the clavicle of Texas and we’re looking at days in the 80s, one day in the 70s, and rain this week, which is so thrilling I can hardly stand it. Seriously, when you go from mid-June to mid-September with only three breaks in a string of triple digit days, it wears on you like you wouldn’t believe. And I work inside in AC (well, relative AC)—the people who had to work outside during those temps are the ones who I really worry about. If next summer is anything like this one, we may seriously have to look at moving because I’m Olde™ and I can’t take temps like that anymore.
One More Day
High Tide Episode 10: The Orisha Olokun is now live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, read, enjoy.
The title of this blog post, by the way, refers to this most unpleasant burst of heat that’s afflicting Texas at the moment. However, it ends tonight and temperatures drop back down into more seasonal ranges so we just have to cross our fingers and hope that Anita Gigawatt holds out for a few more hours.
In writing news the latest High Tide Vella ep has been uploaded and a newsletter has been sent off to subscribers with the special epilogue for Crystal Blade. The rest of the day will be spent working on High Tide (I’ve just introduced the orisha Olokun, the Yoruba god of the oceans who had a fling with Amphitrite eons ago and is not happy with how Poseidon is handling the whole Mad Nereid situation, so that should make for some tasty drama), creating series bundles for Shopify, and outlining Hurricane Warning, the sixth and final book in the Olympic Cove series. That one is going to be interesting because we find out what happened to Asclepius, and things finally come to a head between the Olympic Cove gang and Thetis.
That will also give me two completed series this year, which is good. It leaves me with four books in the Two Thrones series and three books in the Paladins of Crystal series to finish. Hidden Empire is open ended and can run as long as there’s interest, and I’m also noodling over a paranormal Vella serial at the moment. Hey, it’s good to have plans.
Writing Away
Today has been surprisingly productive—dunno how much of that is due to the significantly lower temps, the portable AC unit, or what, but I shan’t complain.
In fact, I should have a new ep of High Tide available on Vella by Wednesday, I’m hoping to have all of Crystal Blade edited and off to the Typo Team and my editor by the weekend, and I think I have a rough outline for To Love a Wild Swan, which is definitely going to be an enemies to lovers story (think Sam Reid in his most arrogant Lestat mode and Anna Taylor-Joy in Emma. format with added bloodthirstiness and you have my couple). The last book of the year will be Hurricane Warning which will wrap up my Olympic Cove series and bring my number of published novels (as opposed to novellas, novelettes, and short stories) up to a nice round twenty.
Granted, I am hesitant to mention any of this out loud because it seems that when I do that Something Happens™ that derails all of my plans. Guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed.
Parsing Reviews
Crystal Blade Episode 13: Question Authority is now available at Vella. Go do the thing.
So let’s talk about reviews. Unlike a lot of writers, I do read my reviews (mainly because I have to post links to a review on the relevant book’s page here). I try not to let the bad ones bother me because everyone is entitled to their opinion and my stuff isn’t going to appeal to everyone. More importantly, over the years I’ve gotten a fairly good handle on how to parse them.
Like in the case of Shifter Woods: Claw. So far it’s gotten three four-star reviews. All of the reviewers liked the story, they didn’t have anything negative to say about it, which *phew.* But the fact that the last and longest entry in the Esposito County Shifters series has only been getting four stars instead of five tells me that I screwed up somewhere.
And I think I know what I did wrong. The original plot of Claw was for the FMC Angela to have no idea what shifters were and to find out to her shock that she was half-shifter when she wound up in Esposito County. But when I was working on the outline I realized I would have to spend a lot of time on her coming to grips with her ancestry and learning about shifter culture for the story to make sense. There was no way I could cram all of that AND a romance into a novella. And the whole point of the Shifter Woods novellas was that they were novellas, meant to be read in an afternoon.
So I pivoted. Angela now knew about her shifter heritage but for Reasons™ had never shifter or interacted with other shifters. And even then I had to skip over a whole two weeks of activity in order to keep the story novella-length.
That … was a mistake. I should have just let the story be as long as it needed to be, cover the events of the intervening two weeks, and give it a richer, fuller feel (in my head there were coffee dates with the MMC Matt’s beta, there were goofy but sweet little interludes with Matt, and Angela coming to terms with her mother’s decision to eschew shifter culture). Even with my edits I missed the novella cutoff and turned Claw into a (very, very short) novel at 42,000 words; in hindsight it really should have been around 60K at the least. But I needed to get it out ASAP so I bit the bullet, and I think that’s why it’s only getting four stars instead of five.
The nice thing about being an indie author is that I can revisit this story at some point and add in those missing two weeks. Not now, mind you—I have to finish Crystal Blade and get to work on High Tide/Hurricane Warning (looking at you, Susan). But if I can carve out some time late in the year, I will see about revisiting Claw and expanding it the way it deserves.
The State of the Writer, May 2023 Edition
Crystal Blade Episode 12: On Wednesdays We Wear Pink is live over at Kindle Vella. And may I say that it was fun writing an Uskelan episode of Mean Girls.
In other writing news I’m getting close to the end of Crystal Blade, which is nice because I am genuinely itching to get to work on High Tide (Olympic Cove 5) and To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire 3). Remember, the goal for 2023 is to finish the Olympic Cove series and it’s already May so I really need to get stepping on High Tide and Hurricane Warning. Also, when I’m finished with Blade I’ll upload all of the episodes in a swath so that people can read them for a month while I’m prepping it for publication. Because I’m nice like that.
I’m also plugging along on Goddess of the Nile, the Hidden Empire novella that will only be available to newsletter subscribers. Considering that it follows the adventures of both Louisa and Henry AND Fyodora and Callum as they try to reunite a reincarnated warrior with his water goddess love while in Cairo, I’m hoping that it will prove enticing enough to get more people to sign up to my newsletter. We’ll see.
As if that wasn’t enough to have me running around like a headless chicken, I also need to get started on some short stories if I ever want my Patreon to get off the damned ground. I have *counts* four series going at the moment so you would think I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to short story plots. I could write about a day in the life of a queen trying to juggle ruling, her new twins, and her loving husband, I could do a prequel story for Fyodora (God knows she’s had enough erotic adventures over the centuries), and I could write about any of the groups on Olympic Cove. I’ve already done a Paladins of Crystal novella for Paladins of Crystal and am working on a separate PC academy romance for Vella, but I’m sure I could come up with a prequel story about Crystal’s life back in Towanda or one of the Buff Lords and how they got chosen to be a royal paladin.
All I need is time. That’s turning into a common theme with me, isn’t it?
Nicola Cameron Writes 