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Next up…

arionrhod

We didn’t have a publication this month (woe! But that’s how the schedule worked out, alas), but we do have one coming next month, in Dreamspinner Press’ “Closet Capers” anthology. We’re rather excited about this one, since it’s a light-hearted “mystery”, and it pulls in one of our favorite themes to write. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that appearances can often be deceiving! Hopefully everyone will enjoy the story, which is entitled “The Whole Kit and Kaboodle”.

Then in May, we have the novella from Torquere — “Fennel and Forgiveness”, a sequel to “Bay Leaves and Bachelors”. June will give us “Love’s Cabers Tossed”, in the Dreamspinner Press’ Day Dose. And we cap off the summer with not one, but TWO novels, our first in print! A historical western, “Heart of Stone”, is coming from Dreamspinner, while “Blood Bathory: Like the Night”, a paranormal action adventure, will be published by Torquere.

We’re excited to have so many works on the way, and more to come. In the works at the moment is the third story in the “Recipe for Romance” saga (which started with “Bay Leaves…”), and a sequel to Blood Bathory.  So stay tuned, and thanks to everyone for reading our stories!

Diary

Contest, and On Writing and Real Life

arionrhod

First up today – don’t forget our Valentine’s Day Giveaway – a copy of our forthcoming story “Fortune’s Slings and Cupid’s Arrows”! You can enter multiple times, so keep putting your name in there! The contest ends February 12th at midnight, and we’ll announce and inform the winner on February 13th!

To enter the give-away, please GO HERE!

Or HERE: a Rafflecopter giveaway

On a different note, I thought I’d talk a little bit about writing and “real life”. Both McKay and I have day jobs — although I’m certainly hopeful that could change one day if we are successful enough! I’m a systems engineer, which means I build, develop, and maintain hardware and software for “big iron” computer systems. I also have two children, although my youngest is now a sophomore in college. While McKay and I had been writing together for a very long time, a lot of things came together about the time my son graduated high school, and it coincided with when we decided to “go pro”.

I think the hardest part with trying to fit in professional writing (as opposed to fanfiction) with real life is that there is far more urgency with the professional work. Most of the time we are working under a deadline we want to make for a particular call for submissions, which can be a little problematic if something comes up at work and I get stuck having to deal with it (or McKay has the same thing happen). Of course family still intervenes, “empty nest” or not. My daughter’s wedding this past December of course cut into writing time rather significantly (not that I begrudge it!) but it can be kind of stressful. I know that the writing comprises a self-assumed responsibility, but both McKay and I feel that we want to keep momentum up, to keep writing and getting our work out there. We have stories to tell, and characters clamoring for attention, and it’s HARD to go for a time without writing. I imagine it’s the way some people feel about exercise — they get cranky and don’t feel right if they don’t get their “fix”, and it’s the same way for us. Writing is an outlet, and we enjoy it. When it’s no longer fun, it’ll be time to stop.

Anyway, I would be interested in knowing how other people view their writing in relation to the rest of their lives. 😀

News Flash

New Novel: Blood Bathory!

McKay

We are proud to announce the Torquere Press has accepted our novel Blood Bathory: Like the Night for publication. We don’t have a release date yet, but we were too excited to wait to announce it!

This is a story that is very near and dear to our hearts for many reasons. It was the first novel we completed after leaving fandom writing to try our hand at getting published, yet it still has roots in the world where we honed our skills for so many years. We needed a television show fandom to use in a fanfiction story, and because we didn’t want to inadvertently stir up any drama by using a real fandom, we decided to make one up. Figuring it was in for a penny, in for a pound, we went all out on the endeavor, creating LJ communities for the “fandom”, and accounts for the “fans” who posted to the them. We even wrote fanfiction based on the non-existent show!

We did more world-building for our fictional TV show that wouldn’t even do much more than serve as a background for the main story than we had on anything we’d written prior, and we discovered that we enjoyed it and were pretty good at it. In fact, there were people who said they’d watch the show if it was real.

The original Blood Bathory was meant to be campy and cheesy, but when we decided to dust off the concept and use it as the basis for our first original m/m novel, we had to revise it heavily to make it more realistic and less cheesy. But the two lead characters and the Big Bad remained the same, and we made sure to create a solid foundation for the supernatural world they live in.

We’re very proud of the characters we’ve created and the world-building we’ve done, and we’re thrilled that our first “baby” is finally going to be published — and in print as well as ebook format!

Blood Bathory: Like the Night is the first book in a planned trilogy, and we’ve already got plots, plans, and even drafting underway for the next two books. We hope everyone will enjoy reading Blood Bathory as much as we enjoyed writing it!