Category Archives: *Blog

I vowed to update my blog more often, and actually do some blogging. So far I’ve been good at the monthly goals and the teasers, but not the blogging itself. So here’s a post with a little bit of everything pertain to me and my writing.

First of all, I’d like to tell you all that More Than Anything is available for preorder. You can save 15% on preordering, so instead of the regular $6.99, you can now preorder for $5.94!

As for other writing news… Inked Souls (#2) was accepted for publishing in ebook and print. I got some great comments from my beta-reader, and I’ve finished self-edits, Broken Souls (#3). I’m in the middle of self-editing Imperfect Souls (#4), so once that done I will submit those two together, since they belong together. I’ve started Wounded Souls (#5), which is the rewrite of Inner Demons and Yesterday’s Tears, but… something came in the way.

You see, I had a need to start reading some fantasy again, after reading only contemporary for so long. And reading fantasy inspires me to write on my own non-contemporary stories. So I’ve been planning, and even got about 2K written, on Apocalypse today. This one is a supernatural/fantasy book, where the main characters are archangels. Quite a few known people from Christianity has got my take on them in this book. I’m halfway in it already, and hope to finally (after years!) to be able to finish it! I’m quite proud of this story, but I’ve never really known how to put it together. Well, now I do, and I hope it’ll come to me when I’ve got time to actually sit down proper with it.

In real life, I’m finally moving back to the town where I go to school. This means no more hometown and no more miserable shifts at work! As of next Sunday, I’ve worked my last shift, and on the following Monday I move back for good. I can’t wait to get my own place again and some peace and quiet so I can finally write. And do my course work, I suppose. Though I’d much rather be writing. :3

I’m blocked anyway. I haven’t got a single clue how to end this novella. I’m three chapters away – and I can think of absolutely nothing to write. I had such a good momentum on the story too, only it fell of the way side in my days of a very, very bad mood. And now I can’t get it back again. It sucks so hard.

And the fact that I want to move onto the next books in the series probably aren’t helping. Neither is the fact that I think the novella is made up of utter shit. I’m never writing a threesome again, it’s bloody exhausting. I want to finish this off, so I can be done with it. Until the beta comments come back and I have to fix everything that’s wrong. And let me tell you, right now I think there’s lots of things wrong.

But this might just be my block. Or that end-of-a-book kind of feeling I tend to get, where I’m SO sure everything is shit. I haven’t felt it in a while now, so this is surprising… I hope it goes away soon. I hate feeling like this. Anyway, yeah, that was my blog post. I was going to start up with those WIP Wednesdays blogs, just to have something to post, but as I’m not feeling the WIP… I don’t know.

I do have other news though! As of tomorrow, it’s two months until More Than Anything comes out, and I have made 15 teasers to be posted until then. I hope I’ve picked out interesting, exciting, must-need-to-know-what’s-going-on-right-now scenes. Look for the first tomorrow! In the meantime, I shall stare at this WIP until something reveals itself to me.

Since I last updated, I finished the two shorts Scarred for Life and Christmas Ink, and thus was able to finally submit Inked Souls. This is the rewrite of Skin Deep, if anyone wonders, and the second book in the new Souls series.

I’ve also printed out Broken Souls, but not bound it yet. This is on my to-do for today, actually, and once I finish Imperfect Souls, the fourth book, I will start to read through them both to make sure they’re in accordance with each other, them being connected and all.

I’ve been thinking a bit about titles today. With IS being the direct sequel to BS, with the same POV characters, I was wondering what people prefer … Do they prefer a new title or for it to be titled Broken Souls II? Next book I’m writing in the series is the direct sequel to Scarred Souls, and it’s currently titled Troubled Souls, but I’m also thinking about if people would prefer it to be titled Scarred Souls II?

The reason why I’m contemplating this, is so that it’ll be easier to see which book has to be read before, because the direct sequels wouldn’t be enjoyed as much if the prequels haven’t been written.

Tell me your thoughts in the comments! I would really like to hear what people think about this. 

Two days ago I finished Broken Souls, the third book in the Souls series. It ended up at 62K in the end, though it might go up or down once I self-edit and it goes into professional edits.

Yesterday I started the short story Scarred For Life, which feature Josh and Damian from Scarred Souls, and it will be at the end of Inked Souls, along with Christmas Ink, which I’m currently writing. Scarred For Life serves to introduce Broken Souls, as it shows a scene from the novel in another POV. With these two shorts, Inked Souls is also print length, so I hope to see all three of these books in print!

Once I finished the little Christmas short with Kian and Silver, it’s on to the fourth Souls book. This is currently titled Imperfect Souls (though this might chance) and it’s a direct sequel to Broken Souls, as that one barely has a HFN ending. It also features a POV that wasn’t part of BS, so I thought a novella (or short novel perhaps) would be the way to go.

It isn’t long until the release of More Than Anything now either, another novel that will be in print! I honestly love writing novels (to think that I used to think I couldn’t ever write novels!). I should start planning out a blog tour for this book, as well as a launch of the series website. How far n advance do authors plan these things, anyway?

I’m also building a series website for Souls, but the launch will have to wait till the first book’s released. I still haven’t got a release date for it, so I’ll just have to wait and see. I’m secretly (or not so much secret anymore) hoping it’ll be released this year though. Let’s cross our fingers!

I’m not very good at updating my blog. Since I am a writer, this is a real shame. I just never think I have anything worth sharing, nothing interesting to write about. And writing about how I have nothing to write about sure isn’t interesting at all.

But I occasionally have news, and I’m not very good at sharing them on my blog, which I should be. I share on twitter and put it up on my coming soon page, but who looks on my coming soon page unless I announce I’ve actually put something new there?

Well, if you do head over there you will see that I have 9 books coming in the near and distant future. I don’t think I’ve ever announced any of them, so this blog post shall from here on be dedicated to all those books that hasn’t yet been unleashed into the world.

I have three novellas coming in the Arctic Love series; Northern Lights, Midnight Sun and White Nights. I’ve made promo teasers for Northern Lights, so they’ll be posted about five days apart come tomorrow and until the book is released on the 2nd of July. I also have the third novella in the Seasonal Love coming, Moscow Nights.

Next up is another novella, Summer Fever, which has been accepted for publishing by Dreamspinner Press. I’m so excited to be published with them! It’s novellas all over until here.

Now comes the longer books; the novels. I’ve got three of them on the coming soon page. More Than Anything and More Than Words, first and second novel in the More series respectively, are on the way. MTA will be released in September, in both ebook and print format, and I really cannot wait for that! It’s my best book so far, in my humble opinion.

Then … *drum roll* comes the rerelease of Scarred Souls! It’s not so much a rerelease as a completely different story. The 8K of the original short story is in there somewhere (broken and mangled), but the rest of the 63K novel is all brand spanking new material. I will post a more in-depth entry about my decision on this series at a later date. Just know that this one might also, in my humble opinion, be my best work so far! (That makes two for best works, but they’re so different I feel this is legit.)

And last but not least, I wrote a little short story for the MM Romance Group’s Love’s Landscape’s Event. It’s title What Family Is For, and will be available for free sometimes this summer.

For a humble writer who has trouble blogging, this has turned into a long entry. I promise I will be better at blogging from now on — and I will keep you all updated on all kinds of news instead of letting it all pass by silently. Until next time!

I’ve been blocked lately on what to blog about. Not much is happening in my life, so there’s nothing interesting to blog about there. Writing is going slow, so there’s not much to blog about there either. So what am I then supposed to blog about? I feel bad when I see that there’s only 3-4 posts the past four weeks. I feel really guilty about it, because I should have something to blog about. I don’t though.

I have come to a decision though. I’ve decided to try my hand at self-publishing. And not just short freebies, but longer works. Novellas and novels. I’ve been reading a lot about it lately and it seems to be a good idea. I can try at least. This means I have to hire my own editor and cover artist (if I can’t make it myself, because I do love to fuzz around in Photoshop) and maybe also a formatter if I can’t do it on my own. Cover and formatting I can most likely do, myself, I’ve even made two covers already (wrap-around covers too!), and I’m quite happy with them, if I do say so myself.

One I can’t share, because it’s the cover to the Secret Rewrite, but the other I might. I’m going to self-publish that novel, after all. I’m also going to finish Hometown soon and self-publish that series as well. It’ll be a series once I write the sequels, anyhow. Writing is going slow however. Maybe because of the Secret Rewrite? After all, once I finish it, I can’t actually do anything about it. It’ll just be sitting on the Mac, gathering dust.

When I put it like this, I should probably think about putting it aside and work on something I actually can publish. But I’m feeling the characters and they’re talking, and I can’t put them away. That wouldn’t be fair. I’m only 18K in or so, but these lads deserve their novel. There’s going to be sweat and tears and blood (quite literally, for both of them), and it’s going to be wonderful.

So I can’t let them go. It’s impossible, even if they are fighting me a bit right now. I think they’re too happy at the moment. This has to be remedied. I shall go do that now.

And with that, I just un-blocked myself. Will (hopefully) start blogging more from now on!

This post will be me gushing about this book, More Than This by Jay McLean. I just finished reading it and I need to talk about it (uh, write about it, I mean), so I darn well will.

First off, there’s a funny story as to how I found this story in the first place. I’m writing the second story in my More series (More Than Words), so I decided to go on Goodreads and search for ‘more than’, to see how many other books out there are named the same as my already written or planned books in that series. Let me tell you, it was a lot of books starting with ‘more than’ out there.

So I scrolled through pages, and then this cover caught my eye. I really liked this cover. No, scratch that, I love this cover, I think it’s amazing! Appealing to me in all the ways. So I clicked the book and I read the blurb, and that intrigued me quite a lot. I read the text reviews, and they were all good. I thought ‘what the heck, I’ll try this out even if it is m/f’, so I went and bought it. First on Kindle before I realised I could actually get it in iBookstore, so then I bought it there too. I don’t particularly like to write fiction books on Kindle. That one’s reserved for the non-fiction and school books, which, let’s be honest, are hardly ever touched.

I haven’t read m/f in years. Not a straight up m/f, contemporary book. I feel Margit Sandemo doesn’t count, because she writes historical/fantasy-ish literature, and I’ve adored her books since I was in middle school. I read her for the fun of it. But these kinds of book … I don’t usually like m/f, so I’ve stuck to m/m for so many years now. But this wasn’t like the m/f books I can remember reading–and hating. This one had a strong female character, and an awesome male character, and they switched point of view through the book and it was just awesome to see their road to love.

This is what I want m/f books to be like. Strong female characters, strong male characters who doesn’t have to be the ultimate alpha male. Yes, there were moments of jealousy and distress in here, on both parts, but it was dealt with in a good way. There wasn’t rape or cheating or any melodrama. There wasn’t a damsel in distress needing a big, tough bloke to save her from the big bad world and who makes her happy with his big, magic cock. This was just a good, old new adult romance between a broken girl and a boy she meets and falls in love with, and they take it slow. I can’t even say how much I like that things progress slowly.

It inspired me too. I’d been toying about writing m/f books too, in my More series, since there a few female characters I really would like to see get their own happy ending. Reading this inspired it even more, and the next book has been unfolding in my mind while I’ve been reading this. I’ve been plotting and thinking, and girls really aren’t so bad, are they? This coming from a woman. But I haven’t liked reading about females in fiction for so long–it’s hard to turn that thought pattern around. But it has turned now, thanks to this book. (And also in part thanks to Margit Sandemo, because she does write in cute, little romances between her characters.)

This book stuck with me. I’m giving it full stars. Truly, I am. But you know what stuck with me most of all? A secondary character in this book; Logan. I have bought his book too, and I will continue on to that one. I am so excited to see how Logan’s story will unfold. I’m pretty sure he won’t have it as easy as Jake and Mikayla did in More Than This. I loved him here, I thought he was an awesome character, and I’m so excited about finally getting to be in Logan’s head.

This is rather a rambling post. I don’t care. I am rambling, because I did love this book, and I can’t seem to put my thoughts back together properly right now. All I know is, it gave me back my excitement for m/f books (though, honestly, only this series. If anyone knows of a book/series like this one, feel free to tell me about it!), but it also gave me back my excitement about my current book, even if that one’s m/m. After struggling to get words down on paper, I’m now all excited about all the words I have left to write. About seeing how it unfolds before me. That’s how I felt reading this book; excited. So bloody excitement over the awesomeness that was More Than This. 

I just finished formatting More Than Okay for release as a free read. Still missing the .epub, but I have the .pdf, and I have set the expected publication date as January 30th when I added it to Goodreads. Lets hope I have everything in order by then, so I can put it up for you all to read. If you’re interested, that is, seeing as MTO is a m/f short. It was previously titled The Two Of Us, but to fit in with the More series, I retitled it. It’s about 4,800 words and it sets up a relationship between two minor characters in the main series. I do hope people will check it out. Even if it is about a man and a woman getting it on, I’m quite fond of it. I like these two characters and have plans to write another short story for them.

Fear not though for those of you who doesn’t want to read a m/f! I got words that my short All Tied Up didn’t make the cut for the DSP Juiced Up! anthology, so I will probably release this one as a free read as well. It’s m/m, with a power bottom and some bondage. It’s also very, very smutty! Need to go through it again though, and make cover art for it, so I’ll see if I can release this one in the next two months.

That’s it for free reads for now. I do have some thoughts for more though, and will post again when I have more news.