Blog Archives
High Tide is Done (Hi, Susan!)
As of 9:00 PM last night or thereabouts, I finished the last sentence in High Tide. It tops out at 94,742 words, and I’m going to let it simmer for a week while I finish the outline for Hurricane Warning and get started on *checks* Chapter Three. The plan is to set up a pre-order this weekend for June 25th, which will give me more than enough time to get it whipped into shape and reader-ready (my editor and my trusty betas are standing by). Then all I have to do is finish, edit, and publish Hurricane Warning, and hopefully all the readers who refuse to read a series until its done will come running. One can hope.
I’ve also made a wee change in the schedule I posted last Friday. I am going to keep posting A Court of Green Clover on Vella as well as the other novellas in the Division Street Fae series, but I’m not going to publish them until they’re ALL done and I can rapid release. Considering that I already have Hurricane Warning, To Love a Wild Swan, and Mage of Fire on my To Be Written desk already, I think this is more than acceptable.
I’m also going to take advantage of my lighter week to whip this house into shape and catch up on a lot of chores, both business and personal, that I’ve slacked off on for the past two weeks. First and foremost on the list is moving the hella powerful portable AC from the guest room to the library so that it can cool off the lower front half of the house, then installing the old window unit we’d bought for the kitchen in the guest room in case anyone comes to visit. The joy of not having a working downstairs HVAC system while heading into a Texas summer, am I right? Also another reason I really need to sell more books. *sigh*
The End is Nigh
Bet you thought I forgot about you. Not a chance.
I have been busting my ass for the last week writing a chapter a day on High Tide (and putting them up on Vella—I’m currently up to 58 episodes so that tells you something). As of last night I finished Chapter 22, which means I have three more chapters and High Tide is finished (hi Susan!).
Now, it still needs to be edited, and according to the Vella rules I can’t publish the story until thirty days have passed after I post the last chapter and mark the story complete. Which means the earliest I can publish High Tide is on June 19th.
Am I gonna do that? Nah, because I want to give myself a little wiggle room in editing, getting stuff to the editor and betas, getting stuff back from the editor and betas, doing the weasel word pass, the spelling/grammar/punctuation pass, and the final polish. So you can expect to see High Tide available on all platforms on June 25th. I’ll even set up an Amazon pre-order on Monday so that I’m locked in, how’s that?
So what comes after High Tide? Well, my mind is still firmly in Olympic Cove so I’m going to go straight onto Hurricane Warning. This is the last book in the series and will be Chiron’s story, wherein you learn his background with Asclepius, where exactly Asclepius has been all this time, and the role they play along with their lover Dr. Nessa Bryant in the final battle against the Mad Nereid. And since people seem to like following progress reports, I’ll post them here daily.
I’ll also be working on finishing A Court of Green Clover (Division Street Fae 1) at the same time, but that’s 1) a novella and 2) already half finished so I can do that in the evenings after working on Warning. What I would like to do but will not promise because every time I do that I get bit in the ass is the following schedule:
Finish High Tide and publish it.
Finish Hurricane Warning and publish it.
Turn Olympic Cove into an ebook box set and publish it.
Finish A Court of Green Clover and publish it.
After that, I would like to work on Crystal Reflection (Paladins of Crystal 3), To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire 3), and Mage of Fire (Two Thrones 5). I strongly doubt I can finish all of these in 2024 but I’m going to give it the old college try. After that, I want to finish off the last two books in the Paladins of Crystal series, then trade off between Hidden Empire, Two Thrones, and Division Street Fae. Two Thrones has a projected eight books and Division Street Fae has five books. Hidden Empire does not have an end date and can continue on as long as I come up with stories for it.
And then there’s Pacifica Rising, my poor lonely SF romance series that does not follow the android/alien/lab creature trope. Is there an SF equivalent of romantasy? I know some people hate the term but it’s a damned handy marketing term. Speculative romance? Romascifi? I need to come up with a better term. But I’d really like to finish the other five books in that series as well (I see you cheering there, Jackie).
So now you’re all caught up to date, and I need to get to work. See you tomorrow, kiddos.
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.
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.
Nicola Cameron Writes 