Delay

I hoped I wouldn't have to do this, but as the days and weeks have passed, it's become clear to me that it's inevitable.

I'm not going to finish Perfect Nightmare anytime soon.

Therefore, I've canceled the pre-order.

I know so many of you are looking forward to this book. Trust me, I get it. You guys are incredible, sending me messages all the time checking in on this book and I love hearing from you, but the pressure to get this one JUST RIGHT is, frankly, overwhelming.

I have ADHD and because of it, I struggle to force myself to work on something when my muse just isn't there. I'm also very easily overwhelmed.

The main problem with this book is the timeline and trying to sort out the million and one threads tying all the stories together. This may be a slight spoiler, but Tristen & Waverly's story begins at the same time Beautiful Carnage does and the timeline of Perfect Nightmare's first half takes place over the same timeline as Beautiful Carnage and Sweet Destruction before the second half continues the timeline new.

So, that means that me, with horrible time blindness, has to try and sort through three separate timelines and somehow weave them together.

It's not going well.

The good news: I *AM* making progress on it. I am continuing to work on the story and I do have a strong idea of what's going to happen in this book. I'm not giving up on it, or even stepping away from it. I'm just asking for you to be patient with me a bit longer while I sort through everything in my head.

I know some of you may be asking why I don't just change up the storyline so I can avoid these timeline issues all together and all I can tell you is it's not that simple. For me at least, when a character's story pops into my head, that's it. I can make changes to small parts of it, but the underlying skeleton is what it is.

I don't tell them what their story is, they tell me.

And because of that, I can't change it. The second I sat down and opened up my mind to let Tristen & Waverly's story come to me, I knew what it was going to be (not all the little timeline-ish details but the main, big parts).

That was it.

And so that's what it will be, even if it kills me.

Thank you for sticking with me. I appreciate it more than you'll ever know.

-H

Formatting

If you've read my last couple of posts, I’ve gone into the editing process and a bit about finishing up the first draft of Dirty Hit. Now, I want to talk about formatting the book.

I’ve done it both ways - formatted the manuscript myself into the ebooks and paperbacks you read, and I’ve also hired a designer to do it for me.

I love hiring a designer (I worked with Dee from Black Widow Designs on Beautiful Carnage and Sweet Destruction as well as Fallen Star), but the problem with it is I don’t have access to the raw file, so if something comes up and I need to change what’s called back matter (the links at the end, acknowledgements, etc.) I have to reach out and it’s a whole thing to change something relatively simple.

I also have the formatting software to do the formatting myself (I use Vellum), but I’m not a designer so the ones I format just aren’t as pretty as the ones a professional does.

But with Dirty Hit, I’m going to format it myself, so I thought I’d share what that looks like.

First, I go through the manuscript and figure out which chapter belongs to which character.

The reason I do this is because I like to have custom graphic headers for every chapter of my book. The formatting program has built in options, but I don’t like how generic they look so I design my own.

Next, it’s off to Photoshop.

I start by coming up with an idea. For this book, the eBook is going to match the style of the man chest cover instead of the alt cover. So, I look over the cover for inspiration:

For this cover, a few things stuck out that I wanted to explore in the chapter headers. First, I always try to match the cover fonts on the inside chapter headers, so I knew I’d be using the same font as the title. I also liked the rough ice texture and the city of Seattle in the background. Those things were my inspiration, so I took the idea to a stock photo website and started searching out elements.

These are the three stock images I used to create my headers. I played around with them a lot, but this is what I finally settled on:

I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Now I have to go through and make a new image for every single chapter. This book has 62 of them, so that’s 62 individual images. Once that’s done, the design aspects for the eBook will be ready to go when I get the manuscript back from all the editing parts.

I’ll post about the process as I go, but for now we wait.

The Process

I thought I’d give you a little peek behind the curtain of what goes on when I finish a book, so here goes…

You can read my previous post about when I finished writing the first draft of Dirty Hit if you’re curious about how it wrapped up. Once I had the first draft done, I didn’t waste any time. I decided a couple of months back to give pre-orders a try again for both Dirty Hit and Perfect Nightmare because it’d been a while and I thought it might be motivating to help me write faster.

It’s really not. All it does it stress me out like crazy. So, after those two books it’ll be a long, long time before I consider putting up pre-orders again. To me, getting the book right is more important than any timeline to release it. I want my books to be the best they can and that means not cutting corners.

Thankfully, the first draft of Dirty Hit was done with enough time to spare that I can do it right.

So what is “doing it right”?

First, I take a read through the entire manuscript. I take notes as I go of things that are inconsistent or words or phrases I notice that I’ve repeated way too many times. (In the case of Dirty Hit, I used the phrase “makes me” almost 70 times. Yikes. For example, “When he looks at me like that, it makes me want to jump his bones.”

This process took me 10 days this time around, including a couple of days I had to take off for migraines. I finished it up late last night.

Once that’s done, the file goes to my beta readers. For this book, I’ve got five of them. They each get their own copy of the file to make notes on. I ask them to point out things they love, things they hate, and anything that takes them out of the story.

After they finish, I go through and read all of their comments file by file. Then I tweak/edit the manuscript to reflect any changes I think need to be made based on the comments I’ve gotten.

Finally, the file goes to my editor where the manuscript goes through multiple rounds of edits and changes. I have ADHD so I really struggle with timelines. My editor does a great job of keeping the timelines of my books straight because otherwise they’d be a whole damn mess.

When the book’s gone through multiple rounds of edits, it’s then ready to format. I’ll make another post about that at some point as I get to it.

So, right now we’re in the “beta readers” stage of getting this book out into the world, and it can’t go fast enough. I’m impatient at the best of times so having to wait to get this book into your hands is driving me crazy.

But a little nugget you might be interested in: There are a few Savage Society cameos in Dirty Hit. You’ll see Romeo, Grave, and Wraith make an appearance in this book. Any theories as to what that means or what they’re doing?

Dirty Hit

Holy shit, it’s done

The first draft is finished as of about half an hour ago and I am BEYOND excited to be done with this one.

While it was fresh in my mind, I just put together the trigger warning list and I’m proud to say it’s my longest one yet. Hayden Vaughn is unhinged in all the best ways and I can’t wait for you to get to know him better.

As a hockey fan, I went into this book knowing that a whole lot of realism needed to be set aside to make the story fun. And that’s what I wanted it to be—fun.

Yes, I’m aware that finding a single professional hockey player by the time they hit the NHL is rare. But for the sake of this series, we’re going to encounter a whole bunch of them.

Another thing that I had some fun with in this one is naming the team. They’re the Seattle Anchors. I live north of Seattle and my favorite NHL team is the Seattle Kraken (and yes, they were my team before all the BookTok hype/drama), so I wanted to play on their team name/logo. The Kraken’s alt logo is an anchor, so for this series, Hayden and the other guys play for the Seattle Anchors.

About a year and a half ago, I had an idea for a story while watching a game and it wouldn’t leave me alone. What if a girl slid into a professional hockey player’s DMs to tell him how shitty of a player she thinks he is? And what would he do if he got a message like that?

This book is my answer to that question and let’s just say what he does after that message is… wild.

The Book You Didn't Ask For

Yeah, I said what I said.

No one’s asking me to write a hockey book.

But you know what? I love hockey.

Always have (though there was a decade or so when we didn’t have a pro hockey team here in Seattle and my sports love shifted onto the Seahawks).

So, when we got our pro team (The Kraken), my love for the sport was reborn. There’s just something about the speed of the game, the violence, the strategy… it’s a rush to watch.

Last year, two of my favorite things collided: Smutty romance books and hockey.

It was, for me, a dream come true. As I was watching my favorite players last year, an idea sparked. What if a pro hockey player got a message from a fan on social media? Only, she wasn’t throwing herself at him. Instead, she was talking shit (or chirping, because… hockey). Telling him how much he sucks.

And instead of getting offended, he’s like… “Who is this chick and why’s she so hot?” And then he asks to be traded to her local team and starts to stalk her…

Since my black little heart loves dark romance and breeding kink, I’ve been frustrated by the lack of both of these things in hockey romance. It’s always so cute and fluffy and rah-rah and that’s just not me as an author. My heroes are assholes. They’re unapologetic. And at the end of the book, they’re not going to suddenly have an epiphany that what they’ve been doing is wrong and change their ways.

So, as Stefan would say, this book has everything: Breeding kink (stealthing!), somnophilia, manipulation, an over the top jealous and obsessed hero who will literally do ANYTHING to chain his heroine to him for life. He gives, like, negative ten fucks about doing what he has to do to get his way. There’s jealousy (yesssss) and one of my books wouldn’t be complete without someone getting their hands bloody.

This book should release in January (I say should because my muse is a fickle bitch and ADHD is like the shit sprinkles on top) as I’m actively focusing on finishing it. Are you looking forward to reading Dirty Hit? Let me know in the comments!

Why is Perfect Nightmare Taking So Long?

An excellent question, and I get asked about a release date and/or the status of this book multiple times a day. I figured it was time to make a post about what’s going on with this book.

There are many, many reasons Perfect Nightmare is taking me for-freaking-ever to write. Allow me to list them:

1. I have chronic health stuff going on (migraines and some unfortunate undiagnosed stomach/digestive thing that makes life rough more often than not. Despite going through a bunch of testing this last year, I still don’t have answers about what it is, but it’s safe to assume on any given day I’m feeling like trash).

2. I also have ADHD. My brain does lots of wonderful things, but it also has a raging case of Shiny Object Syndrome. I spend more time than I should falling down internet rabbit holes of research, taking all sorts of marketing, writing, authoring, etc. courses, going to virtual conferences, trying to refine my writing process to make it faster/better/whatever new thing I think will help. Focus is a really big problem for me. I work every single day that I’m not too sick to (day off? What’s that?) and still only managed to put out two books so far this year.

3. This book has high expectations which means I’m overthinking every single part of it. I knew going in this story line was going to be rough. I don’t think it’s going to be what anyone expects out of Tristen and Waverly, and yet it’s the only way I could see their story going. Originally, I’d imagined starting the book with the two of them hooking up and then time jumping ahead by, like 18 months. Then, I’d cover what happened in those 18 months in flashbacks in the rest of the book. The problem with this is that I HATE flashbacks in books as a reader, so why would I do that to my readers? And when I was brainstorming and working out the plot details with my developmental editor before I started writing, I realized so much happened in that time period, it needed to be covered.

4. So, I covered it. And posted the chapters to Patreon. I decided to split the book into two parts. Part 1 is before the original “time jump” and part 2 is the after. Almost the entirety of part 1 was going to be told from one character’s POV where we really didn’t see the other. But my Patrons really didn’t like that. They missed the character and the impressions of them left behind were not good in a way I didn’t think I’d be able to make up for later.

5. Enter rewrite number one. At that point, I was at, I’d guess, about 30,000 words into the book. I had to do some major plot overhauls, rework all of part 1 of the book and add a bunch of chapters in. I (and my Patrons!) was much happier with this version.

6. But. Now I’m at nearly 50,000 words and one of my beta readers brought up a good point that’s hit me: She didn’t feel as connected to these characters as she did with the characters in Beautiful Carnage and Sweet Destruction. And I knew exactly what she meant when she left me that comment because I knew there was still something wrong with the book but I couldn’t put my finger on it. When I got that feedback, I’ll admit I was like WTF because this book has just been a series of someone not liking some part of it after another after another. It’s like Whack-A-Mole - every time I fix one plot or character issue, another one seems to crop up. But after a few deep breaths, I realized she was right. When I started the pre-writing stuff I do before I dive into putting words onto the page, I cut corners on the character work I normally do. I realized I didn’t know the characters as well as I usually do.

7. Which means I need to go back now and get to know my characters. It’s a whole process I do, learning about their wounds, flaws, lies they tell themselves. Their backstories. Their personalities. It’s a whole thing, but I’ve learned it’s essential to my process.

8. Once that’s done, I’ll have to go through everything I’ve written so far and tweak/edit/rewrite things to make sure the characters come through strong and unique like I want them to. THEN I’ll have to go through what I have plotted coming up and get that all ready to go. I’d show you what it look like for another book I’m working on when I do this, but I don’t want to spoil the plot. Maybe in a future post :)

So, there you have it. That’s why this book is taking so long to write. In the meantime, I’m working on my dark hockey romance (with lots of breeding kink!), Dirty Hit. Right now it’s about 26,000 words but I’ve got it ready to go and will finish it before I go back to work on Perfect Nightmare. I honestly just need a break from that book and I’m hoping Hayden Vaughn can snap me out of it.

Questions? Leave ‘em in the comments.

My Writing Plan & Schedule

Yesterday my dad asked me if I ever worry that I’ll run out of story ideas to write and I laughed. Hard.

See, ideas aren’t my problem. I have covers bought and ideas for at least two dozen books right now. My problem is organization and mental energy to get the stories from the idea phase to actually putting words down on the screen.

That being said, I’ve got three current projects on the horizon with lots and lots more coming down the line. I’ve always wanted to be one of those writers who could write and release a book a month, but I’m just not. The fastest I ever wrote and released a book was six weeks for Wicked God, and it nearly killed my love of writing. Since then, I’ve slowed down and really had to accept that my process is just that… a process.

It changes with every book I write, but one thing I’ve learned about myself is that it’s really important for me to do extensive character work before I can effectively write someone. I did it for Beautiful Carnage for the first time and it made the process so much easier to feel like I really understood Cole and Fallon and where they were coming from, how they would react to situations, their backstories, what they loved, what they feared, and on and on and on. I wrote 20k words just getting to know them that never ended up in the book (by the way, if you’re curious, this is a bonus up on my Patreon).

Once that work is done, I figure out the plot and go from there. Sometimes I can jump into writing at that point, but a lot of times I get stuck halfway through and end up having to go back and retool the story until I’m happy with it. Sometimes it sucks being a perfectionist, let me tell you.

So, as it stands… this is where I’m at with my current projects:

Sweet Destruction:

Currently sitting at 45,783 words.

I’ve been working on this one for a while, but I didn’t do the character work I normally do and I’m feeling lost halfway through because of it. I’ve already done a lot of rewrites on the first half, and then I realized when I was writing a scene two days ago that I’ve got a HUGE problem with the plot that’s going to change a lot of the story… and I’m feeling lost as to how to fix it.

Normally, I work on one story at a time. I have ideas for others, but I’ll just make notes as ideas pop up and go back to my current project. I don’t like starting something and leaving it hanging out there unfinished to start something else because I have a hard time with starting too many projects and never finishing them. I made myself a deal when I started writing that I would fight against myself with my natural inclination to have 10,000 plates spinning (as my husband likes to say) at all times, and only focus on one thing at a time.

Buuuut… I’m stuck. So, I’m setting this one aside for now until I can figure out how to fix the plot. And not only that, but I’m really stuck on the sexual component of their relationship. Sometimes, like with BC, I have a particular scene come to me (sex scene, just to be clear) first and I can shape the entire story around the couple’s sexual dynamic and chemistry. But with this one everything is different. I can’t picture them having sex in my mind (okay, I realize how weird that sounds haha), so until I can, I’m going to let it sit in the corner and move on to a story that’s been screaming at me for months to write it.

Deceit:

Current word count: 0

I’ve got the character work done for Asher on this one, and I’ll be starting Devon’s today. I’ve got the plot figured out (though I still have some detail stuff to work through), and I plan to start writing in the next couple of days. I’m hoping since I’ve been plotting this one for literally months, it’ll go fast. I’m not holding my breath, though.

Sicko:

Current word count: 0

This is a book that’s been bugging me HARD to write it, but I haven’t done a lot of prelim work on it yet. It’ll be what I work on when I have free time (lol) between Deceit and Sweet Destruction. I haven’t announced it anywhere but my Patreon, but it’s going to be a super dark stalker romance with a strong somno element and I really can’t wait to tell Aries and Aura’s story…. soon.

Well, that’s where I’m at with my current projects. Are you more excited for one over the others? Leave me a comment and let me know!

A Beautiful Carnage Update

This book has been my first attempt at not immediately publishing something after I’ve written it. I know a lot of authors plan their release schedules months (and years) in advance, but I don’t really operate that way. Maybe someday I will, but I’m usually more fly by the seat of my pants as a writer when it comes to what I’m writing and releasing and when.

This time around, I also hired a developmental editor. I’ve always been pretty insecure about my stories and the way they play out, so I finally took the leap and hired someone to help me make sure the story was going where I wanted it to and would be satisfying for the readers (Tori over at Cruel Ink Editing, in case you were wondering).

That really helped because she pointed out some places that needed to be fleshed out, questions that needed answers (although there will still be some that carry over into the later books in the series, but that’s intentional whereas these weren’t), and places where more info was needed about a character. (And this is after I wrote a solid 10,000 words about each of the main characters before I even started because I have a compulsive need to know ALL THE THINGS about my characters before I start writing them).

Once all the revisions were made, the manuscript went off to copy and line editing and finally to the formatter. This is the first time I’ve used a professional to format my ebook and paperback and HO-LY SHITBALLS. I’m never going back to doing it myself again.

Dee from Black Widow Designs totally killed it. I mean, just LOOK:

As of now, Beautiful Carnage will release October 11, so not much longer to wait and in the meantime, I’m almost halfway through writing the sequel. You can check it out over on my Patreon.

New Series Announcement

Savage Society of Emerald Hills is a dark (my darkest yet) series full of forbidden stories. Think father's best friend, step brother, priests, etc. It’s set in Emerald Hills, the fictional town located in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains (in the Pacific Northwest), and it takes place roughly five years before my upcoming series Riot Boys of Emerald Hills Prep.

The series kicks off with Cole and Fallon, a father's best friend, age-gap (obv) forbidden romance. If breeding is your kink, you're really going to love this one, too!

I’m currently writing it, but if you want a sneak peek, you can read it here.

I’m doing a few things different with this series. For one, I’m not planning the entire thing out before I go. I’m letting my creativity take me where it wants to. The chapters are going to be much shorter than my usuals, but there will be more of them, so the book lengths should be relatively the same.

But the coolest new thing I’m doing is posting each chapter as I write them over on Patreon. If you read chapter one and can’t wait to read more, I’m posting new chapters daily over there so you’ll want to sign up.

Please keep in mind that with editing and rewrites, the story is subject to change before it's published, and once it goes live on Amazon, it will be taken down.

I’m really excited for this one and can’t wait for you to read it!

Crossed Souls Rewrites Are Done!

Phew, what a journey! It took me an entire month, but I did it. Crossed Souls is now 16,000 words longer and I think the story is so much better than the original version. For context, 16,000 words is essentially the equivalent of four extra chapters (though I didn’t actually add any new chapters). I know all of my books are longer than your average romance novel, but hey, I’ve never pretended like I’m not a wordy bitch.

The entire start of the first chapter is completely different, and there are so many changes throughout the story now that I hope give more depth to the characters and make the worldbuilding better. This was my first time writing a paranormal story, and a reverse harem at that, and there are so many moving parts in the story that I really needed to figure out how to tell the story in my head while also balancing how much information I dump into the book without bogging the story down.

I hope I’ve finally struck a good balance between everything with these changes. If you haven’t read Crossed Souls yet, you can check out the new version by clicking here.

If you have already read it, the new version will be updating to your Kindle later this week (sadly, while Amazon delivers same-day, their electronic updates are still slow as hell) so keep your eyes out for that and let me know what you think of all the changes when you give it a read!

Next up… Bound Souls.

Plotting

I’ve written eleven books, and in that time, I’ve had a different method for plotting every single one of them. As a writer, I struggle a ton with perfectionism and I also have what I’m guessing is a raging case of undiagnosed ADHD on top of a type-A personality that drives even me crazy.

So, what does that mean for my writing methods? Welllll…. so much work goes into a book before I even begin, but the process has never felt quite right. It’s why I’ve used a different method every single time I’ve started a book.

Now that I’m moving on to Bound Souls and also Twisted Little Games and a new series I’m working on, I’ve actually stumbled onto a couple of methods I’ve used that I am absolutely loving.

Now, when I tell you that every other method I’ve tried has sucked, I’m not exaggerating. It’s sucked my writing mojo right out of me. I’m in this weird place where I need to plot in order to write because I’m not a pantser (someone who can literally fly by the seat of their pants in writing). If I sit down to a blank screen with no idea where I’m going, I’ll get nothing done and get massively frustrated, too.

So, I’d do some semblance of gathering my chaotic thoughts into a plot and then start writing. But this time… I figured out how to organize.

So, here’s what I do now:

1. I do a series of writing exercises as my character to get a better sense of who they are, where they come from, what’s important to them, what they want, what they can’t stand, etc. It’s 99 questions and really intense (aka takes a long time).

2. Every single scene idea, no matter how small, gets written down on a blank index card and tossed aside.

3. I do this over and over until my brain is dry.

4. Then, I transfer those ideas to sticky notes.

5. Finally, I put them in timeline order from start to finish for the book.

6. Then, I look to see where there are gaps. If it seems like something jumps randomly from one scene to the next, then I know I need something in between.

Check it out:

I like to use Finger Paint paper because it’s big and the notes stick on it again and again. I draw a line down the middle so I keep the timeline linear.

Scenes I decide not to use get left behind.

Now, for the character work I’ve started doing (this new series is the first that I’ve done the character work this way. In past blog posts, I’ve shown the old way I’d do things with a whole workup of the characters, but this new way allows me to really get into the character’s head like never before.), here’s a sneak peek of a new character I’m working on and the kind of writing prompts I’m going through for him:

Don’t mind typos, etc. This is not edited in any way and is supposed to be sort of a free for all writing exercise.

I’ll be talking more about this series in the future, but for now, you can see how really digging into a character’s head can be beneficial. I’m excited to see how it changes my writing moving forward (hopefully for the better!).

Crossed Souls Rewrites: Progress Update

I’ve been working my way through Crossed Souls and tweaking the story to correct some things I should’ve put in the first time around. Currently, I’ve added about 7,000 words to the story and I’m working on chapter nine.

It’s been fun going back through the start of this book and punching up Willa’s character. I actually yesterday was working on chapter nine and realized that I totally forgot about the list I made of things to look out for and fix in this book.

So, I had to go search it out. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a serious problem with collecting notebooks. I have so many and they are everywhere. My husband has honestly given up the fight against the stacks I keep of them, and I try to keep them confined to a couple of areas only. See? Compromise.

Anyway, I had to go dig through all the notebooks because I was *pretty sure* I’d written the list in an actual physical notebook and not, like, a word doc or google doc or something. Eventually, I found it and when I deciphered my handwriting, I noticed there were a couple of things on there that I hadn’t already corrected.

So, I had to go back to chapter five and fix some Willa stuff. There were complaints about her character falling flat when she meets her Guardians, and I definitely don’t want that for her, so I’m working really hard to make sure she keeps her personality throughout.

I also had to write in a whole new scene between Gramps and one of the guys which was fun and I think explains some stuff that was left out before that’ll help the story make more sense.

This week, I’m hoping to make big progress but I always feel like that whole “my eyes are bigger than my stomach” thing when you’re really hungry and load up your plate and then can only eat half. That’s how I look at my rewrites. I always start out like, “Okay, I can do this. I can get the next… 15? Yeah, let’s go with 15 chapters done this week and then it’ll be ready to go.” And then the week comes and goes and I’ve done three chapters and beat myself up over it.

Still, I would really love to get this finished so I can start writing Bound Souls. I’ll update next week and let you know how it goes!

Dulls vs. Extras

Remember when I talked about how my world building was basically trash in Crossed Souls? I’ve had to do a lot of exploring of the world in my head to figure out all sorts of little details of Willa and the guys’ environment to change while I’m doing rewrites.

One of the things that kept coming up was the question do the humans know supernaturals exist?

I went back and forth, but ultimately I wanted them to know of each others’ existence, at least on a basic level. The humans don’t know about all supernaturals or all powers, but they know people who have powers that mere mortals don’t exist.

But then this created a whole other issue. What do I call each side? Humans? Mortals? Supernaturals?

So many things had been done before, and I had a discussion with my 11-year-old because they read a lot of fantasy which was helpful in fleshing out what I didn’t want to call them.

Ultimately, I decided on Dulls and Extras. Dulls for the non-magic/non-supernatural humans because the Supes find them horribly “dull.” They don’t have powers and they’re not really worth interacting with because of it.

For the supernaturals, they go by “Extras” because they’ve got all the human pieces but with all sorts of extras sprinkled in. They’re “extraordinary,” hence “extras.”

So, if you re-read the updated Crossed Souls, or skip it but end up reading Bound Souls, you’ll see these terms quite a bit throughout the series, and now you know what they mean.

Postponing Emerald Hills Elite

I don’t know if you noticed but Twisted Little Games has disappeared from Amazon and my website. It’s not cancelled.

I’ve mentioned this in other blog posts I’ve done recently, but I’ve decided to postpone the Emerald Hills Elite series, but just for a little while.

When I created the pre-order and started working on it, I thought I had all the time in the world. Well, it turns out that writing reverse harem is a lot harder than I thought it’d be and Crossed Souls took me much longer than I expected. It’s not a huge deal, but just means that I’m not ready to put out Twisted Little Games just yet.

I probably could’ve rushed it, but I really didn’t want to do that. Getting books out as fast as I can is something I try to do, but I won’t do it at the cost of the quality of the story. And after reading the reviews on Crossed Souls (which, admittedly, is a whole different beast because it’s paranormal and comes with its own challenges), I really want to take my time to get TLG right.

So, right now, the order of things I’m working on is this:

1. Crossed Souls rewrites.

2. Bound Souls

3. Secret Emerald Hills project that takes place five years before TLG.

4. Deceit

5. Stolen Souls

6. Twisted Little Games

That order could change, but for now that’s where my head’s at. I have another series that takes place in Emerald Hills that I’m not announcing until I have made some progress writing it, but I’m happy to put off TLG so that everything can release in the chronological order that the stories take place.

Just remember—good things come to those who wait! Haha :)

Magic

When you invent a world of magic, it can be pretty intimidating. Anything goes, so where do you begin?

I saw this meme once that inspired me when I was figuring out what sort of magic would exist in the world of Twisted Soul Magic.

So this was sort of the basis for Willa’s shop. I wanted her to create things that would make everyday life so much better if they existed. I didn’t explore it a ton in Crossed Souls, but I plan to in the future books just as fun little nuggets here and there of how much more awesome it would be to be an Extra instead of just a Dull (aka a mortal or non-magic user).

If you were creating a magical world, what would it look like? What sort of power would you have? And what kind of product would you wish existed? Leave a comment and let me know!

Crossed Souls in the Making

I mentioned in my last post that Crossed Souls had started in my head as something so much different than it turned out to be when I wrote it. Originally, I imagined Willa as a sort of Cupid-like character. She was compelled to help everyone around her find their soulmates while not having one of her own and she was definitely bitter about it.

Here’s one of the very first things I wrote when I was trying to flesh out the idea (sometimes, I get a snippet of a character’s inner thoughts or a tiny bit of a scene so I just write it out and stick it in a folder to deal with later. In this case, I never did anything with it because the story went in a different direction):

The book was originally going to be titled “Soulbound,” and I’m really glad I didn’t stick with that one. It would still fit in the context of the series, but I like Crossed Souls better.

Once I had an idea of who Willa was, it was time to create her harem. I’ve always had a love for all things dark and psycho, so Hiro and Crew were the first two guys who flickered into existence in my head. Then, Ever and Knox joined the party… and I can’t promise things will end with the four of them.

I’ve talked about my series bible before for this book, but this thing is a BEAST.

For every character I create, I make a full write up on them. Here’s just a peek into part of Willa’s:

There are about three pages like this for each character detailing all sorts of stuff about them, and I do the same thing for places, familiars, villains, magic types, and everything else in between. It’s a pretty hefty file when all is said and done. It goes on and on…

Did you have any idea how much goes into writing a book? I know I didn’t before I started doing it myself! Now I’m curious: Leave me a comment and let me know who your favorite character in CS is.

Twisted Little Games - Plot

Every book I write, my actual process of writing the book changes just a little bit. Well, I guess that’s not true—sometimes it changes a LOT.

I’ve talked about this before, but I’m a hardcore plotter. There are some writers (called Pantsers) who can just sit down and write and let the story take them wherever it wants. The thought of that gives me massive anxiety. Sitting down to stare at a blank screen with no idea where I’m going makes me sweat.

I tend to write out the big parts of the story (like where it’s going to start, end, and anything important from the middle) and then start to get more and more and more intense and detailed as I break it down until I have all the details worked out before I start writing.

As much as this brings me peace and lets my brain calm down enough to begin, it also really boxes me in. So much so that with two of the last three books I’ve written (Hostile and Chased), I’ve had to scrap the second half plans for both, do massive rewrites and then replot the second half. It’s a big undertaking that might not have been necessary if I’d just shifted the way I worked.

Yesterday I was stressing over Twisted Little Games because I know the characters. I know exactly where I want it to start and where it’s going to end. The problem is the middle is still a bit fuzzy for me and not a lot was coming to me when I’d sit and try to brainstorm.

Enter my writing partner slash awesome friend Cathleen Cole who said, “Why don’t you start with what you have and then when you get to the end of what you’ve figured out, plot the next bit?”

Uhhhh.

Lightbulb moment!

So, that’s how I’m writing this book. I started today working on the first chapter without the entire thing plotted out (eeeeep!). We’ll see if this way allows for more creative freedom without it being a total free for all or if it bites me in the ass, but at this point I’m willing to try anything.

Emerald Hills Elite Behind the Scenes

The Emerald Hills Elite series has been on my mind for a looong time. I don’t know if reverse harem academy books are still popular or not, but they’re a trope I love to read (and have loved to read for a while now). I’ve really itched to write my own story, put my own spin on the subgenre and so that’s where the idea for this series came from.

The name “Emerald Hills Elite” is a mix of a few things. “Emerald Hills” was a neighborhood in the city I grew up in (Edmonds, Washington). It was the fancy place that sat up on a hill and overlooked the grey-blue waters of Puget Sound. It was also the place where at Halloween, it was rumored the residents handed out full-sized candy bars (FULL-SIZED, PEOPLE) and so everyone would pile in their cars and head there for trick-or-treating festivities.

I’ve always loved the name, so I thought it really fit for this series. In this series, the city is called “Emerald Hills” and it’s a fictional place that I image is somewhere on what we called the “eastside,” which is east of Seattle. It includes places like Bellevue and Issaquah, if you’re curious. The city itself is up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range so it’s got all sorts of pine trees and rocky lake shores that get all spooky when it’s foggy and the clouds hang low with rain.

That’s the setting I envision with this book.

There’s also another city literally on the other side of the tracks called “Mulberry.” It sounds like a nice place with a name like that—wholesome and sort of 50s-ish, but it’s not. Not at all.

(Side note: The name comes from the song “Mulberry Street” by Twenty One Pilots, one of my favorites from their new album and I wanted to give it a nod in the story. The song is falsely happy sounding, but when you listen to the lyrics, there’s a much darker undertone about mental health).

In order to keep track of where everything is in relation to each other, I drew a map (and yes, my art skills are trash but you get the point).

My original dry erase board rough sketch of Emerald Hills and Mulberry.

The prettier (but still not very good) one I made in Canva.

This story was originally going to involve all sorts of weird stuff (I was going back and forth about making it PNR, but decided against it… because there was a whole fountain of youth storyline thing that was just strange. Sometimes brainstorming goes in an odd direction), but in the end, I think I’ve got all the parts that will make this awesome fleshed out.

So, there are two rival gangs, a badass heroine, four guys in her harem (we’ll meet them later), two cities on complete opposites of each other, and a school that’s creepy and has its own issues.

Now, I just have to figure out how much (if any) bullying I want to put into the story. Originally, I planned to make this a bully romance but now I’m not so sure that’s what it wants to be. Thoughts?

Twisted Little Games - Prep Work

Now that Hostile is finished and out in the wild, it’s time for me to start working on my next project. I thought it would be fun to update you as I go, giving you a behind the scenes look into my process of plotting and writing the first book in the Emerald Hills Elite series.

Up until I wrote Crossed Souls, I’d only ever wrote “traditional” male-female books, so I never gave something like a series bible a whole lot of thought. It wasn’t until I started CS that I realized keeping track of all those characters and world details was going to be too much to just wing it.

So, I created a series bible and that thing was a total godsend while I was writing, and as I’ve started looking ahead to working on Bound Souls, being able to look back at all the info has been invaluable.

Knowing EHE was going to be the same level of detailed and intense, I knew right away before I even started on the plot I was going to need a series bible for it, so I’ve been building it for months.

What even is a series bible? Well…

It’s a file I keep with all the details on the series. My Emerald Hills Elite one currently looks like this:

Every single entry on that side bar has or will have details written in it about either a particular location description, it’s purpose, the characters and all their issues, etc. It really helps me shape my characters into real people who have real issues, quirks, and the type of people they are.

Yesterday I nearly finished my series bible for Emerald Hills Elite, although I don’t know that as long as the series is ongoing it’ll ever be finished. This time around, one other difference is I’ve spent time fleshing out the side characters and the bad guys so I have an idea of what makes them tick. Usually, I just make them very one-dimensional and toss them in the story and call it good.

I’m always, always, always trying to be better and this is one of the ways I think I’m growing as a writer.

Once I have the series bible done, I’ll work on the actual plot (though I’ve done a lot of this work already). I’ve got a rough outline. I know where the book starts and where it ends (it’ll be a cliff, sorry!) but the stuff in the middle is where I’m hung up at the moment. I’m hoping to tackle it either today or tomorrow.

Once the plot work is done and I have everything in line, it’ll be time to start writing. I’ll update again when things are done and just before I start so you can keep up with my progress in bringing this book to life.

I can’t wait to get started!

Hostile is Live!

Today for me is extra fun because two is my lucky number, so what better day for Hostile to make its debut?

That’s right, Indy and Penelope’s story is LIVE! Have you downloaded your copy yet?

If not, you can grab it here.

This book seriously tested me. When I was two thirds of the way through it, I decided it was missing something. See, every book I’ve written since Finding Zen/Fallen Star, I’ve gotten further and further away from writing what I wanted to write (or the stories I wanted to tell) and more in my head about writing things people will like.

Of course, ideally those two things would overlap and I’d write the stories that excite me and also people would enjoy reading them. But, it was when I was essentially having a breakdown over this book my husband said something so simple yet so profound.

“Stop writing what you think people want and write what makes you happy.”

Damn. The man’s a genius sometimes, I swear.

Anyway, for some reason that had never occurred to me. So it was at that point I postponed the release of Hostile and reworked the entire story. I did massive edits and rewrites on the first 2/3, cut SIX chapters from the end (which wtf was I doing? This beast did not need six additional chapters. It’s already over 100k as it is), and made Indy the kind of hero I love to read.

After that, the story practically wrote itself.

So, if you haven’t downloaded yet and you’re still on the fence about reading it, keep reading for a sneak peek of Hostile:

Penelope

“What made you change your mind?” He reaches over to the hedge wall closest to where he sits and plucks off one of the white blossoms, handing it to me.

I take it and tuck it behind my ear before biting my lip. It’s unexpectedly sweet, him giving me this flower as all his attention settles on me expectantly.

I don’t know if I want to confess everything to him, but there’s something sort of magical in the air right now. It feels like we’ve been transported to another place in another time where there’s nothing but him and me. It feels safe to confess my deepest buried hopes and wants, but there’s still the fear that he’ll reject me. Maybe he’ll laugh or tell me again how he’s not the kind of guy who does serious.

Still…

If I don’t take a chance, I’ll never know.

“I don’t like not talking to you.” I pluck at a nonexistent piece of lint on my dress, but eventually gather my courage to look up at him.

He blinks at me as his lips turn down into a frown and his eyebrows pull together like he doesn’t understand what I said. Maybe he can’t believe I actually admitted it.

My heart picks up speed as I decide I’m going to go for it. I’m going to ask for what I want to know. “Why did you run away?”

His expression shutters and he turns away, clenching his jaw. “We should get back.”

“You’re never going to tell me, are you?” Like I said, I knew this would be the result, but I had to try. It doesn’t stop the twisting in my chest or the blurring of my eyes as tears gather. The last thing I want is to let Indy see me cry again—especially not when he’s the reason I’m upset.

“No.” One syllable, so final in its utterance I swear it echoes through the stillness of the night like a death knell.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I say, jumping to my feet. “I want you off my security team. Now,” I tell him before lunging for the opening to get out. Suddenly the space is too small. His cologne is everywhere, his body heat warms my side, and I need to get away with a desperation that surprises me.

Indy has other plans, though, and when I rush for the exit, he grabs me around the waist and hauls me into his lap. I scream and try to throw myself off, pounding my fists against his chest and struggling but his strong arms are locked tight around me. It’s a waste of energy to keep struggling, but rage courses through every atom of my body as hot tears slide down my face.

“Stop struggling, Duchess.”

“Let me go,” I growl, digging my nails into his forearms. I don’t even stop to admire how sexy they are, which is a testament to how hurt and angry I am.

“No.”

I huff out a breath that blows my hair away from where it’s tangled in front of my face. “Is that your new favorite word?”

I’m so damn annoyed with him. He won’t talk to me, but he won’t let me go. I guess I should be grateful he made me angry because my tears have dried up.

“No,” he says and his lips twitch. Asshole.

Keep reading: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098BPGNMJ