Category Archives: Storm Season

Note to self whilst editing

Stop describing Bythos’s lips as “plush.” Yes, it’s the ideal term for them, but there are other words to describe a set of full, pale pink, perfectly cupid bow-ed lips on a demigod. Lush, for example. Plump. Sensuous. Suckable. You get the idea.

Also, stop using the same term to describe his ass. I know it’s a surprisingly well-upholstered thing of muscular beauty, but you also know whose ass gets that term applied to it on a regular basis. It just means you’ll wind up unexpectedly meeting him at some point and feel very weird about the whole thing. It’s bad enough that you have to avoid Michael Fassbender and John Barrowman for the rest of your life — don’t add to that list.

Also, more beard love for Aphros. He should be using those lovely bristles on Ian’s inner thighs and other sensitive areas. Use all your tools, Nicola.

I am an editing mofo

The goal was to have Storm Season edited and off by Monday of next week, but Real Life(TM) has intervened as it usually does (my other job ate last Monday, and various stressors kicked in as of Tuesday and made editing…somewhat difficult). As a result, I may not have everything done by the 3rd as planned. For instance, I’m currently expanding and polishing Chapter Three with thirteen more chapters to go, and that number may increase as we go.

So, my revised goal is to have the sucker ready for submission by December 7, come hell or high water, at which point I spend December finishing off Behind the Iron Cross in order to have it ready for submission by the middle of January.

To be honest, 2013 is going to be an insane year for me. Still in the planning stages are five more books in the Olympic Cove series, another historical ER set in Roman-occupied Britain, and a contemporary paranormal romance. And then there’s the alternate history mystery that’s finished and being edited, plus the straight up SF comedy thriller that is finished and desperately needs editing, and THEN I want to do an SF police procedural.

Yes, I’m insane, we already know that, moving along now.

And that’s NaNoWriMo for Nic

Words today: 5,023
NaNoWriMo total: 50,112
Grand total: 62,121

Needless to say, I’m not finished yet — got around 8-10K to go, but I may well be able to punch that all out by Wednesday night, allowing me to eat guilt-free turkey on Thursday.

But man, today was rough in Olympic Cove. Bad, bad shit has happened to my boys, and I must take a break before I start crying and running amok.

So, we’re pretty much midway through the month…

And I wrote 3,033 words today, which gives me 42,051 for NaNoWriMo, and 54,060 words in total. Amusingly, I wrote a Starbucks scene while at Starbucks, which made the setting description a doddle.

Thanks to Tiffany Reisz, the minx, I’ve added a rather ominous subplot in the middle, which 1) will be picked up and utilized further down the series, 2) is causing all kinds of relationship problems for the boys, and 3) means that Storm Season will probably top out around 70K. Also, Bythos is a great big brilliant idiot of a manchild, and Aphros has got to get over his inferiority complex about not being “the smart one.” Ironically, the human who’s still mourning his dead wife is the most emotionally balanced of the three. I love my boys to bits, but man, they’re making me pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh.

Secretly, I’m also wondering how many people who read this will also want to read Ian’s SF eco-thriller Greenstrike. That would be very meta.

Day Four: the Beast slogs towards Olympic Cove to be born…

Words today: 4,039
NaNoWriMo total: 13,352
Grand total: 25,272

My brain hurts, and I need two gorgeous redheaded sea gods to rub my neck and make it all better.

BUT. I’ve explained what Bythos and Aphros are doing with their pollution-cleaning coral, why they’re interested in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, plus I’ve set up the potential for a dramatic face-off later in the story. That’s good for one day.

So, NaNoWriMo

Or as I like to call it, November. Because I’m a masochist with no sense of self-preservation, I’m continuing to work on Behind the Iron Cross whilst plowing into the first Olympic Cove book, now titled Storm Season. NaNoWriMo word count for the last three days:

Beginning word count: 12,009

Day One: 3,036

Day Two: 3,012

Day Three: 3,265

NaNoWriMo Total So Far: 9,313

Total Word Count: 21,322

And that doesn’t include the 2.5K I tacked onto Behind the Iron Cross in that time. I must now put on my artisan hat and fill Etsy orders. Selah.