The Island of Lost Book Projects

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about the things we want to do. We're asking everyone to name three projects we've been planning to work on for a long while and haven't yet touched.

It's kind of like the writer version of the Island of Lost Toys. Ever so sad.

Except that these kinds of lost projects still have hope of being rescued. I keep them in two subsections of my overall tracking workbook (in Excel spreadsheets!) called "Tabled" and "Potential." Really, the tabled projects don't count for this topic, as it specifies they must be untouched. The tabled projects are ones I at least started to write, then back-burnered for various reasons.

In the potential section, however, I have seven projects listed. One is a contemporary romance trilogy that I did start to write up a long time ago - relatively: six years ago - so technically it's a tabled project. Being a purist for these things, I moved it to that subsection.

That leaves four projects in there - one a more or less total surprise because I forgot I was ever going to do it. And really... I'm not going to. It's the third book in my Blood Currency series. See, the deal is, way back in the mists of time, I'd submitted PETALS AND THORNS to several publishers. Loose ID bought it and when I notified Ellora's Cave about the offer, they gave me a weird, disorganized answer. (In retrospect, this was a harbinger of their eventual implosion.) Later, the EC editor contacted me to buy it. I had to disappoint her, but she asked me to her write something else. That became FEEDING THE VAMPIRE. She asked for more and, because EC had this weird thing about there having to be three books in a series before they gave you a series title and something better than their one-size-fits-all reusable covers (and we wonder why they went out of business...), I pitched her a third idea for the series as well. I wrote book two, HUNTING THE SIREN, but by the time it came out the implosion had begun and I never wrote the third book. I don't even remember what the concept was, though I'm sure it's on my laptop somewhere. Anyway, I've bundled the first two books into one volume called BLOOD CURRENCY (the name of the series).

I really doubt I'll write more. Nobody has asked for more, so that says something!

Another project is taking one of my very first fiction stories, PEARL, and working it into a novel. I might still. I took down the story because it has a tragic ending and I figured that was off brand. But I'd love to have that tragic moment be a black moment prequel to a happier outcome. It could still happen.

The other two projects are kind of in the same bucket: anthologies I'd discussed doing with Megan Hart and that we kind of dropped for various reasons. One was an anthology of fairytale retellings and the other was an erotic anthology called SIN CAVE, a followup to THE DEVIL'S DOORBELL. Both titles are a play on misogynistic terms for female genitalia and pleasure. I'm kind of sorry we never got around to doing the followup of SIN CAVE, but I also think that if projects fall apart that way, it's for a reason. They don't have enough energy to carry them through. Also, with SIN CAVE, several of the authors in THE DEVIL'S DOORBELL are no longer writing. Maybe someday with a new cast?

I should caveat, too, for those of you with fingers poised to type outraged comments about the stories you're waiting for in my other worlds - this doesn't include those! Those are absolutely on the stove and simmering.

Visiting a Ship from My STAR CRUISE #SciFi Romance Novels

DepositPhoto

This week’s topic: What place in your own books do you most want to visit and why?

I had to ponder this one a bit because in my books it’s not really about the place, as it is about the planet or the ship…or ancient Egypt, sometimes.

Another cool spaceship from DepositPhoto

I’ll leave ancient Egypt for another post because I decided for today I’d choose my interstellar cruise liner of the far future, the Nebula Zephyr, which  has featured in a number of my science fiction romance novels. She’s run by an AI named Maeve, who’s a bit terrifying. She’s actually a military AI, who used to run a huge Sectors battleship and who would have been terminated when her ship was decommissioned except for Captain Fleming. He was the last captain of Maeve’s battleship and he managed to somehow have her transferred from that ship into the brand new luxury liner he was taking command of upon his own retirement. Maeve does a great job of running the luxury liner of course but remains military at heart and little glimpses of that attitude show through in some of the stories.

The CLC Line is run by veterans,  in part to provide good jobs for veterans, so they’re quite understanding of some of the things my captain and crew do in the course of the books. As Captain Fleming explains in Star Cruise: Stowaway, “I always had Special Forces Teams as key elements of my strategy when I commanded a battleship,” he said as he sat and stirred cinna spice into his drink. “When I agreed to join the CLC Line, I saw no reason not to have a similar capacity on board. As we’ve seen in recent years with the rise in space piracy and other challenges, even a civilian vessel may need a core of well-trained operators at some juncture. Jake Dilon is one of the finest Special Forces officers I ever met, and I back his decisions. Anything he and his team did for you was under my authority. I’m the man in command, and the responsibility is mine.”

 I always admired the Flying Tigers who came home from World War II and set up their own airline, so the CLC Line and its corporate policy was my little tribute to those pilots.

Maybe someday I’ll tell the story of Maeve and the captain, which readers frequently ask me for, but it’s not on my list of upcoming books.

DepositPhoto

I never really define what the Nebula Zephyr looks like from the exterior. Partly that’s so I can use whatever stock photos are available to me for the cover art and not upset anyone too much. I do have a detailed layout of the ship in a notebook that I refer to fairly often. Suffice it to say she’s a huge ship, with twenty decks or levels, which gives me a lot of room to have adventurous plots.

Below the bridge deck, Level A has the huge casino, the observatory (where Maeve can order up any galaxy or star system a passenger might wish to see), restaurants, shops, the theater where the Comettes dance troupe performs, a host of other amusements and entertainments for the passengers and a state of the art sickbay, presided over by Dr. Emily Shane, heroine of Star Cruise: Outbreak.

Nebula Zephyr carries cargo as well as passengers, with two entire levels devoted to the cargo hold, run by Cargo Master Owen Embersson, who took the lead in Star Cruise: Stowaway.  In this respect I adopted the Titanic era model, where the vessel was a luxury liner and a working cargo ship. Captain Fleming is very deferential to the Cargo Master, because transporting interstellar freight is a highly lucrative business and the CLC Line does expect its ships to turn a nice profit.

Level 5 is the beach, with the entire space given over to an ‘ocean’, with special water and sand brought from the resort planet Tahumaroa Two and elaborate holograms projected  by Maeve for the enjoyment of passengers and crew. It’s not a holodeck like the Star Trek concept, where all kinds of adventures can occur, but it’s a great site for parties, volleyball and late night strolls. My characters go there often. The water gets quite deep, there are waves and everyone seems to have a good time there. Mostly.

Movement between levels is via antigrav tubes, although there are some retro stairs for passengers with an aversion to antigrav.

As you might expect the Nebula Zephyr has a five star chef in charge of fine dining and all food operations. I always enjoy working Chef Stephanie and her kitchen into the plot – it gives me a chance to draw upon all those seasons of watching ‘Top Chef’!

There’s a lot more to the Nebula Zephyr (and new features come up regularly in the books) but I think I’d really enjoy my time aboard the ship, mingling with the other passengers, who range from the very rich in First Class -the ‘Generational Billionaires’ and ‘Socialites’ (also very rich but young, heedlessly arrogant and constantly pleasure seeking) to the solid  and sturdy Second Class of your more every day Sectors citizen. (There is no Third Class in the Sectors.) I’d devour Chef Stephanie’s gastronomic delights, take in a lot of shows, gamble at the Casino, get to know the members of the crew I write so much about…maybe even have a romance and HEA of my own with one of the ex-Special Forces Security Officers (Jake Dilon alas is spoken for, being married to Dr. Shane.)… I think I’d probably want to stay aboard forever, maybe as their Writer in Residence, which as yet the ship doesn’t have!

Book Vacation

I have two series and one stand alone book. The stand alone and the UF series are all set in Seattle. Okay. It's a Seattle that has demons and magic swarming the city, but still. I had picked Seattle specifically because I was living there and had long, deep affection for the place. Still do. So while I still love Seattle, if I could visit one of my book locations, it would absolutely be the SFR series I'd pick because SPACE.

I have so many questions and so many things I want to see with my own eyes. Let's be clear - I do not want to experience getting space sick. Don't. So I'm gonna go with being aboard one of the ships that has supplemental gravity. Then I want to go everywhere. I want to know if there's a palpable difference between how a ship navigates interstellar space and interplanetary space. This is where you realize I'm a sailor and I'm mistakenly comparing navigating vacuum to being tossed around on ocean waves. Intellectually, I get that time/space doesn't necessarily work that way, but it is the only frame of reference I have. THIS trip would fix my frame. 

Don't know what it says about me that I ache for an experience I'm not going to have in this life time. I mean, sure, it's theoretically possible that I could suddenly make the money that would buy my way to the International Space Station. But let's be realistic. With that kind of cash, there are a lot of other things I could do that wouldn't end up with me barfing my guts in zero g. Nopitynope. 

So I'll do my vacationing on paper, thanks. 

I want to vacation in Antarctica. No, really.

Here in Texas, it has already topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, and it's only gonna get hotter from here. You know that thing people say about frying an egg on the sidewalk, and then they laugh? Around here, it actually works. (I wouldn't recommend eating anything cooked out on the concrete. Probably tastes gritty. Tea brewed in the sun, however, is lovely.) It's also disgustingly humid right now. You'd need gills to breathe properly, and there's some kind of moist-loving fungus growing in my planter box, right next to the butterfly flowers. Gross, right?

So it should come as no surprise that I dream of getting away from all this oppressive heat. When I was writing my latest book, More Than Stardust, I needed a setting for a secret evil laboratory of villainy. The climate had to be good for electronics (so, cold and dry), and bonus if geopolitical territories and jurisdictions were a bit murky.

 Antarctica was the obvious choice.

I have to tell you, researching the geography and lore of the place was super fun. Conspiracy theories abound, I totally believe that the continent once supported a highly advanced now-lost civilization (there are ancient maps!), and I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens.

Plus, I am old enough to remember when The X-Files found a secret spaceship there, and also recall watching those Jacques Cousteau videos PBS used to run. Good times. With Antarctica associated in my head with a lot of fun theories and vistas and critters, it's exactly where my supervillain needed to situate her hideout.

 As a bonus, it would make for a refreshing change from all this ucky summer sauna weather, so yeah, that's where I'd go if I could pick from all the places I've written about. This is how Garrett sees Antarctica for the first time in the book. Doesn't it just sound like primo vacation land? Incidentally, he's under attack and riding an inflatable dinghy.

Excerpt:

The world was white, white on white, blinding and full of death. He couldn’t tell where the gun emplacements were precisely, but he knew in a general way where the shots were coming from, and that was the direction he needed to head. He aimed the hover-boat-thing, engaged the battery-powered engine, and popped the Armorflate shell, which he’d had the foresight to bleach whiteish.

They’d surfaced in thin ice—it was summer, after all. In winter, this whole bay would be locked up and require breakers, but right now it wasn’t so bad. Still he was glad for the modifications he’d made to the inflatable dinghy. It flew over the ice, eased over the first drifts at the shoreline. Transitioned easy from water/ice to ground, and didn’t lose any of its forward momentum.

Garrett could say the same for himself. It felt like he was breathing adrenaline, pumping it pure in his veins. He thought about the efficiency of machines, like Dan-Dan. That guy wouldn’t slow down because of fear or injury. He’d plow on, do the job. Complete the mission.

Bullets skidded off Garrett's Armorflate, and he knew that his statistical chances of getting hit by at least one bullet were off the chart, off the grid, off the whole damn smartsurface.

Also, this place where he was right now? Ant-freaking-arctica? Redefined cold. Summer, again. He kept telling himself, It’s summer. Hot. Surfing. But none of that worked. The arctic air hit him smack in the visor. He hadn’t thought to construct a windshield like a real hovercraft would have. Stupid.

The suit kept him warm, though. Vallejo had done good.

Maybe if he’d had a few more weeks he could have added impact resistance. Garrett could feel the sharp zing of each bruise as he slammed his shins against the retractable metal decking, or elbows against the reinforced sides. But he only felt the flare of pain for a second, and then his senses were on to the next insult, the next injury, the next defiance of death in all its forms.

The white ahead of him bled orange for a moment, then darkled.

Explosion?

 Releasing 7/9, available now for pre-order at Amazon and everywhere ebooks are sold

Featuring Antarctica and lots of cool weather!

Escaping Summer in My Fantasy World

It's so bright and hot today ~whine~ that the place I'd most like to visit from one of my books is...

Nivurn.

It's a hostile land of unrelenting snow and ice, of perpetual night and warring monsters. (It sucks for my protagonist who is a fire-warrior deathly allergic to cold and wet.) On this icky, sticky summery start of July, I'll take the snow. I'd even take the creatures if I could have the gift of mind control that my protag does. For now, I'll settle for a mango daiquiri. ~dusts off the blender~

The Isle of Flowers

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: What place in your own books do you most want to visit and why?

Most of my books take place in landscapes I'd like to visit - or in the terrible places that my characters run away from to reach the good parts. There are elements of my favorite landscapes in all my "happy places." That's one of the best parts of writing alternate world fantasy: I can grab all of my favorite elements of various places and meld them in to a single paradise.

The one on my mind right now: Calanthe.

The image above is from my inspiration board for writing THE ORCHID THRONE. Calanthe is the island paradise my virgin queen rules. Beautiful, magical, a refuge for those seeking asylum, and the last bastion of art and knowledge in a cruel empire that values neither.

Calanthe is my ideal home, in many ways.

The Backlist is Front of Mind Today

Our topic this week is “whatever is on your mind”…

I have a ton of things on my mind, like migraines (I have one today), Legos and Duplos (my toddler grandson has just discovered the joys of Duplos so here I go for the third time into the universe of Legos - luckily I LOVE them too), politics and debates, carbohydrates…but of course this being SFF7, we’re supposed to be talking about the craft of writing. 

Writingwise, my backlist is on my mind. I have somewhere in the vicinity of 35 published books available (8 paranormal romances set in ancient Egypt, one fantasy romance and the rest science fiction romance). I try to keep my backlist fresh in reader’s minds by taking snippets from the older books for the weekly hashtags like #1linewed and #Bookqw. I do bookstagram ads. I feature one book from my own backlist every week at the end of my New Releases Report on my blog, which typically covers 50-60 new releases by other authors, in SFR/Fantasy/PNR. I’ve been doing a series of “Why I Wrote (insert book title)” posts on Fridays on my blog, talking about my influences and interesting trivia related to the books…

I try for the legendary BookBub ads...pricey but wow, can they move backlist books! Hard to get though, especially for scifi romance, which has to be put in the BB Paranormal category, where the competition for attention is huge...

I’m wildly happy at how well my current Badari Warriors scifi romance series is doing. I’m thrilled that readers seem to be enjoying these characters and their adventures and romances (nine books so far and going strong). I’m having fun writing the books for sure.

I’d just like it if more readers also discovered the other 26 or so books on my backlist. June was very encouraging, with quite a few books sold outside the Badari Warriors series, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed the trend might continue.

I deliver the same essential elements in every book, whether SFR or ancient Egypt – a strong hero and heroine, adventure, romance and sometimes a touch of the mystical/inexplicable element that I myself used to love so much in Andre Norton’s science fiction and fantasy (although she needed more romance LOL). I write what I personally most enjoy reading. (Although I do love a good Regency romance but so far have never written one.) So if you like one book from my pen...

I have done a couple of boxed sets...

I do have some crossover readers who’ve told me they enjoy the ancient Egyptian PNR as well as the SFR. I get it that not many people want to jump from the far future and high tech to the far past and gods and goddesses with unusual names (to our ears) directly intervening in daily life. Or vice versa!  I enjoy writing the Egyptians though – excuse to do research, yes!!! – so I’ll keep on with that series . It’s a wonderful changeup for my Muse and a creativity refresher.

But back to the backlist, I’ve run some ads and I do think they help a bit. I don’t do newsletter swaps, Facebook takeovers, Book Funnel giveaways and many other things I know other authors do, for various reasons. I’m all about minimizing my stress and only doing those things I’m comfortable with. I accept as part of that decision, I have to accept the results. I’d go nuts running a zillion Facebook ads for pennies and doing A/B testing and etc. though. It’s just not me.

I do subscribe to the common wisdom that the best advertising for the older books is to write another book. I think writing the next book and the one after that is the key, especially if you find "your readers".

So far I have no desire to put new covers on older books and re-release them. I’m not saying never to that idea – I’ve seen other people do it quite successfully – but it’s a question of allocating my scarce promo dollars where they’re most effective. Better to buy a new Badari Warriors cover and get that next book out than to spend the money on a new cover for a five or six year old title.

Book piracy of the backlist (and the frontlist) is a HUGE problem. I spend a LOT of time on takedown notices. I used to use and love the Blasty service for this but it’s undergone some strange metamorphosis into a seemingly zombiefied “charge your credit card, do a few robo takedowns, no real service, no one home to complain to” tool. For years I ignored the issue of piracy as being too much a whack-a-mole game that the author could never win and many sites are actually just phishing for credit card information but there are some who are defiant and almost make a game out of their efforts to give away the hard work and heartfelt words an artist created. 

The thing is, I have rent to pay and bills to pay and I do need groceries and cat food for Jake the Cat…if I want to write more books, I need a roof over my head and food to eat.

(I’m paying bills today so all this is on my mind…)

I just read a series of M/M fantasy romance novels that I cannot get out of my head because they were so good and full of layers and details and new things to discover upon re-reading. The Captive Prince by C. S. Pacat, which is a trilogy and you really need to read all three books. I would DEVOUR that author’s backlist…except there really isn’t one, or at least not in the fantasy romance genre. The three books and several short stories about Damen and Laurent are it, other than a series of graphic novels about a group of students at an academy competing for a fencing team. Which I have to admit, does not excite my interest.

I do tend to be a stream of consciousness person so there you have it for my trains of thought today…at least I tried to keep the discussion somewhat tied to my backlist!

Try it, you’ll like it! (Assuming you enjoy my books in the first place of course.)

Release Day on My Mind

On my mind this week is the ramp up to the release of Enemy Within  on July 17. I'll attach preorder links below. The sharp-eyed among you will note that this cover is NOT Enemy Within. No. It is the *other* thing on my mind - Enemy Mine is a hot novella in the same world as Enemy Within, in fact you briefly meet the hero of this story in Enemy Within. It's on my mind because it went live in serialization on Radish this week. New episodes will release for the next 19 weeks. 

This is pure experiment. I have no idea if the story will interest a new age bracket of readers or not. I hope it will, but the last time I checked, the only click on the first episode was mine, checking to make sure it had indeed published. But hey! If you Radish, you'll find this easily by searching on either the title or my name. 

This novella was originally published in e-format by Berkley. So you may have seen it before. 

Interesting tidbit. It was written on a dare issued by none other than our very own Jeffe Kennedy, who, it turned out, had to assist me with some of the psychology. But that's another story. 

What's really on my mind? The lovely and uplifting community of writers to which I so gratefully belong. 

Preorder links! These are for e-versions only. I understand Amazon is working on the link to the paper copy of the book (y'all I have serious sticker shock on that - but it wasn't my call) but I do not yet have that link for the physical copy. 

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