Category Archives: Writing
A little late for resolutions, but what the hey
Starting today, I’m going to try and post something here everyday, because if y’all are checking in on a regular basis, I really owe it to you to get on my stick and give you something to read.
So, info nugget number one: after turning into the WIP That Would Not Die, Two to Tango is finished, polished, done de done done done, and off to Evernight as of a few hours ago. When I started the story, I thought it would top out at maybe 40K or so. Final word count was 66K. This is what happens when you decide to add not one but two batches of family drama as a subplot. It doesn’t help what when I was grousing to a writer buddy of mine about the fact that the damn story just kept growing, she tweeted to me:
(giggling & pointing) “First book of series, first book of series…you’re in for it now!”
I told her not to take it the wrong way, but I hated her. I already HAVE an ongoing series that I need to work on, plus people have been asking for a full-length A Boon by Moonlight sequel, PLUS the other erotic romance novels I want to do, plus the SF and urban fantasy novels I want to do. I actually have a list of 20 books already in my To Be Written/Finished queue (and yes, in case anyone’s interested, that includes the two Trickster sequels I have planned). That’s twenty full-length, 60-100K novels. To quote the hangman in Blazing Saddles, darling, I’m swamped.
I think a lot depends on 1) if it gets accepted, and 2) how well it does. There’s certainly more than enough material for additional books (in addition to the family drama, I created a nifty little device call the Puppet Wars that explains why nanite arrays and bioaugmentation was outlawed in this universe, and there’s a pissed off law enforcement officer who’s pretty much screaming for revenge). It’s up to Evernight now.
In the meantime, nugget two: now that TtT is off, I’m getting back to work on Breaker Zone and Behind the Iron Cross (I’m writing them in parallel because there’s so little crossover between the two I don’t have to worry about plot contamination). Have no idea when those will be done, and I’ve learned not to give ETAs — we’ll just have to see how fast I can get them finished. At least the nice thing about this delay is that I’ve solidified the characterization in BZ, which means I’m going to have to rewrite at least the first three chapters. But hell, if it’s good enough for Tiffany Reisz, it’s good enough for me.
So yeah, that’s where I stand this Monday night. Stay tuned!
Yes, this may be self-indulgent
But considering how Two to Tango got inspired in the first place, this section is staying in the book:
Dmitri swallowed, staring at his father. “I didn’t think you’d let me come back. And even if you did, I couldn’t do what … you wanted me to do.”
Eyes flickered away from him. “I wouldn’t have asked you to. Fyodor took your place. He’s everything I ever wanted.”
The old pain washed over him, still stinging after all these years. “In a son.”
“In an heir. You are still my son, but you would have made a terrible boss. You’re too tender, too kind for your own good.” A chuffed laugh. “This is what happens when you let a crazy intellectual be your child’s godfather.”
Dmitri dredged up a smile. “Uncle Misha was a good man.”
“He was a crackpot, with all his acts of kindness and those ridiculous hunts of his. If he hadn’t been your mother’s favorite brother, I never would have let him in the house.”
I love this kind of creative domino effect
Thanks to the kind and gracious Colby Keller (NSFW because he is a performer in cinema sans culottes, but I write smut so you shouldn’t be reading my blog at work anyway), I now have a soundtrack for the Olympic Cove series. Some time ago Mr. Keller had posted a picture of a handsome young blond walking on a beach and invited his readers to respond to the picture in song, with the idea of using any responses in a music video he was calling “Hookers on the Beach” (the man is nothing if not puckish).
In response, Andrew Klaus of the band Mattachine Social contributed a lovely composition to the project, and wound up releasing it as an track for his new project Boarding School. He even dedicated the track to Colby, which prompted Colby to write a blog post about the album (yes, I still call them albums. I’m old, moving on now…).
I saw the post, thought, “Hm, might as well give it a try,” popped over to the BandCamp site and started listening to the Colby-dedicated track. Then went back to the beginning and started skipping through all the songs. Then bought the entire album because Mute Songs vol. 01 by Boarding School is not only the exact type of music I like to listen to while writing, but also fits my mental theme of the Olympic Cove series like they were made for each other. The album is in “pay what you think it’s worth” mode, but chuck in at least $12 if you’ve got it — that’s the average price of similar works on iTunes, and it’s well worth it to help support people who can make music like this.
Which just goes to demonstrate the cause and effect nature of inspiration — what you put out there can inspire others to do the same. Gotta love it!
My Writing Process blog tour
The lovely and talented S.J. Maylee asked me if I wanted to participate in a writing process blog hop. Being the type A attention slut that I am, I said yes please.
Of course, then I actually had to write a cogent and intelligent post on my writing process. Also being a huge smartass, I was tempted to leave you with the writing process I posted to my Twitter account (inspired by Chuck Wendig):
- Got an idea
- I hate outlining.
- Oh, God, I suck at everything.
- FINISH IT.
- Finally — OOH. Got an idea.
But cooler heads prevailed. So here are my answers to the following five questions:
Q. What am I working on?
A. I just crossed the 40K mark on Two to Tango, my M/M SF caper erotic romance prompted by a picture of John Barrowman tangoing with Misha Collins at a convention (this is what happens when you do things like that, jb). The plot: when dashing intergalactic art thief Rory “The Highlander” MacLellan accidentally kidnaps/rescues surly archaeologist Dmitri Grigoryev during a heist, neither of them expect the authorities to put out an arrest warrant on Dmitri as Rory’s inside man. On the run and with no choice but to work together, the two plan another heist, navigate a complicated family get-together, and fight their growing attraction. But will Dmitri’s own family secret derail what could be the start of a beautiful friendship?
The goal is to have this finished, edited and submitted by the end of this week, and so far it looks like I’m going to manage it. After that, I need to go back to work on book 2 in the Olympic Cove series, Breaker Zone, and my MMF historical erotic romance set in 1923 Weimar Republic-era Berlin, Behind the Iron Cross. Apparently people are getting impatient to see both of those, and I don’t like to leave readers hanging.
Q. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
There’s a heavy SF element in most of my work, simply because I started out as a science fiction writer (and still write it). As I recently commented to someone, my debut novel Storm Season is the only erotic romance novel I know of that contains Greek gods, bioengineering, nanotechnology, a paranormal battle sequence, and Alan Turing.
Q. Why do I write what I do?
Very simple — I write what I like to read. I deeply enjoyed Tymber Dalton’s Fierce Radiance and Tamora Bight series, Morgan Hawke’s Victorious Star and Laurann Dohner’s various series, and that’s what I shoot for when I write — a healthy blend of SF and erotic romance.
Q. How does your writing process work?
See above.
Seriously, I have an extreme lively imagination and a hyperactive Muse, so coming up with story ideas is rarely a problem. My current To Be Written queue contains 20 books at the moment, and the list just keeps getting longer every month. I often work on two or three books at the same time so that I can flip back and forth between them if I get stuck or feel stale on any one story. I try to hit a set word count every day, although Real Life and Ramón’s crazy work schedule sometimes interferes with that. One I finish a book, I put it aside to cool while I work on something else, then come back for edits when I can look at it with a clear eye. I go through at least two drafts (and sometimes three), and always give it a final polish when I get edits back from my publisher. I treat writing as a job — best damn job in the worl, mind you, but it’s something that has to be done every day, no excuses.
Q. Who will we meet next week?
Sorry, I didn’t tag anyone on this. But I fell confident that you’re going to find some amazing writers on the other blogger’s posts.
Punch a Stake into Impostor Syndrome (Die Vampire Die!)
The Bloggess posted this on February 5. I just saw it today and immediately realized I had to share it with y’all, because oh Lord I’ve run into this more than once in my life (my fourth grade teacher always used to have this one girl named Patti do the artwork for our classroom. After months of volunteering my services because hey, I was a pretty good artist, too, I finally got to do something — I made paper chains. Out of brown paper. For Patti’s 3-D swing collage. But I’m not bitter).
Did I ever tell you how my mother would sigh over my early SF stories and say wistfully, “I wish you wrote romance novels — then I’d have something I could show my friends.” *eeeevil cackle* Hey, Mom? Be careful what you wish for — you just might get it!
Stab those damned vampires right in the heart (particularly the Air Freshener Vampires. I wave my metaphorical whang at them!).
My poor book
The publishing world can be a mystery at times. Let’s say you write something that you’re rather proud of. You submit it to a publishing company, and they like it enough to purchase and print it. It makes its way out into the world, and garners good reviews.
But the sales suck. So you purchase the same promotion that you did with your other books, the ones that sold well. You talk it up on social media, you do the round of blog tours, you do everything you can to get people to buy your new baby.
And still, the sales suck. And you just don’t know why. So you plump for the graphics, .MOV files and soundtrack necessary to make a nice, eye-catching book trailer, and put that up pretty much everywhere in the universe.
And still, the sales suck. Since you’re a pro and know when to cut your losses and move on to the next project, you’re left with checking the book’s stats on NovelRank every so often, seeing the sales number remain at 0 for months on end and wondering what you did wrong.
This, by the way, is what happened with my Romance on the Go™ story Grading the Curve. I had rather high hopes for this story, seeing as it was my first M/F contemporary erotic romance and the subject matter was near and dear to my heart. So you can understand why I was more than a bit perturbed when it sank like a lead-lined stone. I don’t know if it’s because people are used to me writing M/M paranormal romance and didn’t want to read a contemporary M/F story by me, or something about the cover didn’t work, or what. I don’t think the story’s bad at all — it’s a little dense, yeah (I really should have expanded it to 15-20K), but the pro reviewers all seemed to enjoy it and it’s gotten good notices on Goodreads. In fact, Grading the Curve’s GR rating is a hell of a lot better than Trickster’s, and Lord knows that book is doing extremely well.
To quote Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love, “I don’t know — it’s a mystery.” But I still feel bad for my poor bald-headed stepchild of a book. If you ever want to see how I handle a hetero erotic romance, I do ask that you give it a try.
We have a personal winner for the Evernight blog hop!
My personal contest winner for the Evernight Love Scenes Blog Hop is Tammy Ramey! Tammy, your chosen prize is on its way — thanks for participating, and good luck to you and everyone else in the Grand Prize drawing.
If you were jonesing for swag from me, however, never fear — I’m still running my Trickster Release Day giveaway featuring a gorgeous OOAK bracelet from Belaurient Arts. The contest runs until midnight on 2/16, so there’s still time to enter and win — just go to the post and leave a comment, and you’re automatically entered.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to add “Snow Day” to the Free Reads tab.
Happy Valentine’s Day/Trickster Release Day/Giveaway!
Let’s start off with the first section of that title — happy Valentine’s Day! No matter how you’re spending the day, remember that you — yes, YOU right there, and wipe that smear of chocolate off your lip, sweetie — are my Valentine.
Section the second — it’s Trickster release day! (Which was actually yesterday, but I had to delay this post in order to take receipt of an item for section three) Yes, my new M/M shifter erotic romance Trickster is now loose in the wild and available from Evernight, Amazon, All Romance eBooks and Bookstrand, to name but a few purveyors of fine erotica. It already has a Bestseller Silver Star on All Romance eBooks and cracked the Top 100 Genre Bestsellers on Amazon less than 24 hours after release, so I am one happy writer!
And because I’m a happy writer, I want to give something back in return. From now until midnight on Sunday, I’m running a special Trickster release day giveaway. Belaurient Arts has been kind enough to create a custom bracelet for me, shown below; it combines polished river rock, natural mother of pearl, tiger’s eye and garnet beads into a tawny combination reminiscent of a coyote’s pelt. Finished with a solid bronze toggle clasp, it will go with anything from work outfits to a little black dress.
For a chance to win the bracelet, all you have to do is leave a comment in the Comments section below with your email address and I’ll choose the winner on Sunday. Good luck!
Guess what’s coming on 2/13?
(Aren’t you glad I refrained from the obvious joke about coming on 2/14?) I just got word from Evernight that Trickster will be released this Thursday, February 13, just in time for Valentine’s Day! Oh, I’m gonna have happy pants all week…
Why you do this to me, Brain?
A week ago, I decided to take a nap, as you do. My brain, being the assbutt that it is, decided to entertain itself while I was snoozing. As a result, I woke up with an image in my head of a dragon swooping down and plucking a man off a road. But the dragon doesn’t eat him, oh no. It’s mating season, don’t you know, and the dragon has other things in mind.
Problem is, the guy is a priest. And dragons, after they shift to human form for the mating bop, traditionally kill their partners so that their souls will pass into their offspring, otherwise said offspring will not be able to shift to dragon form. My subconscious is a dank and weird place, I swear.
An hour later I had the first book in a trilogy worked out. Problem? It’s dark. Dark de dark dark dark. As in incest, patricide, quasi bestiality, rape, all in a high fantasy package. We’re talking Game of Thrones meets Kushiel’s Dart. Oh, and did I mention I don’t DO high fantasy. Why you do this to me, brain?
Nicola Cameron Writes 