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…You’re certain that the story you’re about to tell is garbage.

It happens to me a lot.

Okay, wait, that sounds weird. So let me try to explain.

I’m sure I’m not the only one it happens to. Actually, I know I’m not. But I get this feeling, deep down in my gut, and I just know, with utter certainty, that the story I’m about to write is bad. It’s all very, “What was I thinking? I can’t write this story. It’s stupid and pointless and no one is going to want to read it. I need to scrap it, throw it away, and think of a new idea. A better idea.” It happens to me every time I come up with a new plot, when I get to the point of getting ready to actually write it. I spend time waffling about, trying to convince myself that it’s a story worth telling. And I give my computer the side eye, not wanting to go near it, though I feel it’s siren call. Because that way lies heartache and I don’t want heartache.

(not to muddy thing up, but I also get this feeling about about the three-quarters point while actually writing the story. I know all the time spent was a waste and it’s a crap story and I should abandon it and think of something news)

But see, the characters, they call to me. They keep popping up in my brain and I keep seeing scenes from their lives. I keep seeing this story played out in all those times during the day when my brain scampers off to play with imaginary characters.

So I know this is the story to tell next, I know these are the characters to tell it. Logic brain tells me that. But Lizard Brain, the one that’s full of fear, keeps pulling me back.

Lizard brain won’t win in the end. I have the plot mostly mapped, and I know where I want to go with it. I know that’ll change when I actually start writing, but I’ve got my jumping off point. I’ve got two guys who have already begun to worm their way under my skin. There are times when I don’t know whether I like Seth or Gabriel more.  They both have endearing points, and things about them I adore. I like “watching” them together. (See how I just dropped the second MC’s name in there?)

I gotta get through some stuff over the next week or so. Obligations I need to fulfill and another yarn project I want to finish. But I’m making tentative plans to do a sequesterish Saturday, to get that jump start on the writing. Because I need to just shove this moment out the window. And start telling the story.

I’ve got two exciting things to talk about!

The first is that earlier this week, I contracted a novella with Dreamspinner Press!  Woo! It’ll most likely be out at the end of the year, and it’s Travis and Noah’s story. I had a blast writing it, I fell in love with these guys so hard, and I can’t wait for you  to read it too. It’s actually the longest book I’ve written for publication to date. Holidays play a big part in the story, not to mention a little bit different twist on the friends to lovers trope. So basically two of my very favorite things. Seriously, you guys, I adore this story and I’m so happy it’ll be out to enjoy during the holiday season. I’ll post more info as I have it. But for now know that His Needs will be coming to a bookshelf near you!

And then, the bittersweet news…

Amber Quill has officially shut it’s doors as of today. And it’s still sad news, and it still hurts my heart. The Seattle guys are currently unavailable. But they won’t stay that way for long. I’m working with a fantastic artist and friend (details to come!) to give them a great new look inside and out. And then I’ll be publishing them myself in the usual outlets. At the very least, they’ll be at Amazon and ARe. I don’t have all the details worked out yet where that’s concerned. But I’ll be sure to provide the info when I have it. Rest assured, if you already have any or all of the Something Like books, they won’t be changing. Or if they do, it’ll be minor things. I’m not adding any new content. So you don’t need to purchase the new editions.

The new versions will hit the e-tailers sometime in the next couple of months. Definitely watch this space for updates. There’ll be lots of news in the coming months!

I love days off from the day job. I love them even more than I used to, since everything went sideways and has yet to straighten out. I particularly love that my boss was like “take some days before crap really starts flying so that you don’t get shafted.” That’s a good boss right there.

At any rate, I have to work today and tomorrow, but then I have the rest of the week off. Two days on, five days off…that’s how it should always be! LOL.

So the focus issues aside, because I’m very much looking forward to the time off and I don’t want to work, I’m thinking about what I’ll be doing on those days other than lounging in comfy clothes. I have a little reading to do, get ahead of the game. I have much knitting to do, and audio books to listen to. That right there is an awesome thing.

And then there’s writing.

Yeah, I haven’t put many words on the page as far as this new story has gone. I’m in that “second guessing all my choices and should I even write this book” stage of the game. It happens to me every time. Every. Single. Time. I start plotting and thinking and I get all sorts of ideas and then it’s like I slam into a concrete wall. I agonize over every little choice and talk myself out of and into the story about seven dozen times (and that’s not an exaggeration). I irritate the people in my life fretting over simple things. And I’m still firmly in that stage. I have yet to see my way clear.

But I have tentative thoughts of writing on my days off. I often do that with days off, and it seems like I can focus well. But I don’t know yet if I’m ready to get going on the story. Or if I want to work on other things, writing wise. So I don’t want to plan anything and have it fall through…either because of external or internal forces. When that happens, I have a tendency to beat myself up. So I don’t want to set myself up for failure.

If I do, then I do, and that’s great. If I don’t, then that’s okay too. Ultimately, these days are about relaxing and unwinding, which I’m in need of. And if that means I spend some time at my computer putting down words, then all the better.

I need one in the worst way.

You may (or may not) have noticed that the word meter on my latest WIP has not moved a single bit. I have the first couple of paragraphs written of the opening scene. I have my characters. I have about three plot points I want to hit before I get to the end, where there will be an HEA (because this is romance!). But I’m having trouble getting going. I wrote those first few paragraphs when the idea struck, typed them out quickly and emailed them to myself. But that’s all. I’ve barely even written any notes. And the few times I have, the story has gone off the rails in a direction that I didn’t want it to. Somewhere that’s out of character for my MCs.

Normally, I’d say that’s what the characters want and I’d roll with it. But it’s not. Nor is it what I want from the story. So I have to back up again and refocus.

I have this feeling like the story is just out of reach. That if I could just get into the groove of it, then the rest of it would unfold before me. If I could just get going, I’d be okay. Seth and his pretty man would commence falling in love in the way that was right for them and not by falling into all the tropes and cliches along the way.

Side note: there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with tropes and cliches. At all. Cliches are cliches because they are true; tropes are popular because people LIKE them. (Me included!) I have no problem with tropes and cliches. What I’m actively avoiding is my brain’s sudden need to throw a bunch of them in together. Seriously, one or two are enough for a story, thanks.

So anyway, yeah. I need the jump start to get going. I need the thing that’s going to drive the story. Once I can get going, then I’ll be okay. (Or at least, I’ll have a different set of problems that come with telling a story) But until then I’m actively thinking while I go about all the other things in my life and trying to find that one thing, that scene, that thought, that is going to jump start this story and get the engine revving.

Those who are the closest to me will know that I am…weirdly picky about names for my characters.

I’m drawn to certain names, and one letter in particular, and so they keep popping up when I’m trying to figure out what my character is called. Not only that, but if I have some sort of association with the name, good or bad, it’s immediately off this list. On top of that, the name needs to fit with the character. By that I mean it has to be something his parents would have named him, and also be age appropriate.

I’m not going to name a man Braxton if he’s the forty year old son of Italian immigrants, you know?

Above all, it has to be a name I like, that I won’t mind writing/thinking/seeing a gazillion times.

So sometimes, this is an easy task. Sometimes I see the name and it inspires the character. Sometimes I have the character first, and with very little thought, the name appears. I often have backstories as to why a character has the name they have, despite never getting to work them into the tale. Names are sort of my thing, and have been a bit of an obsession for a long time. I’ve always collected them, collating them away for use somehow, someway.

I’ve barely begun my latest WIP. Just have a few paragraphs written. Just the very beginning. But a big part of that was for days on end, I had no idea what the name of my narrator character was. I didn’t. I had his love interest pretty clearly, and though I did change his name at the very beginning, I quickly found the one that fit him. But for my MC who was telling us the story? I had no idea. I waffled back and forth, changed my mind a dozen times, kept trying on new ones that didn’t quite fit. Friends weighed in on the dislike of a few and offered reasoning for discarding a few others. Nothing felt right anyway. This guy was coalescing in my mind, all his pieces were coming together. I was learning about him, figuring out all the bits that made him, and I had no idea what he was called.

Until it came to me, out of the blue and it fit.

Now all I can think about is Seth, and how he’s going to fall in love with a pretty man. And I’m excited to tell the story.

I write about two guys falling in love. However that should happen. More often than not, it’s on the sweeter side. There’s not a lot of heavy angst. Just two guys meeting (or who already know each other) and then falling in love while they go through some stuff.

And it seems my stories are a particular length. You won’t see any 100,000 word epics from me. My plots aren’t that intricate. My characters aren’t that complex. I use as many words as I need to tell the story, and no more than that. So my wheelhouse seems to be the novella length book. Average is about 30k. Which is (very) roughly about 100 pages. I’m very comfortable with this and happy about it. I’m not going to pad my stories with scenes that aren’t necessary just to have more words. But neither do I have a strict word count (unless it’s a sub call) to which I’m trying to write. When I write the story, I have a goal sometimes, but ultimately, it will take as many words as it takes and whatever that is, I’m happy with. (Though, yes if you look at the WIPs page, I’m aiming for something a little longer with my next one. At the moment it feels like a longer story, but that could all change.)

It took me a while to get to this point. I looked at what everyone else was doing, and I put this immense pressure on myself to be like them. That all the hurt and pain and angst and long, drawn out, word heavy books made it real. And they are. Those books are very real. And they make  you feel and hurt and have satisfaction when you get to the end (I love reading those books!) But it took me a long while to get to the point where I could accept that my stories are just as real. (Which is silly, because sometimes I’m in the mood for shorter and fluffier so it makes sense that other people would be too)

Now I’m in a place where I have embraced what I write and how I write them. (I wrote about the how here.)

And if all that sounds like your kind of story, then please, check out my backlist.

I didn’t freak out nearly as much as usual.

I worked on it, did final edits and tweaks. I watched some YouTube, podcasts as well as some favorite songs which I sang badly at the top of my lungs. I just had to give the cat lots of love because she was just demanding all the attention ever. I read it through. I caught even  more typos (gah! bane of my existence). I poked at it, ignored it in favor of more bad singing, and then finally I had it complete. I panicked a little then. But I had the submission email already waiting. I had the synopsis already attached. All I had to do was attach the MS, after I saved it to ALL THE PLACES and then I would be done.

I attached it.

And then I hit send and ran away from my computer.

I could have thought of a dozen reason to keep reading it through. I could have dragged it out for months. I could have whined to someone for days or even weeks, about how it was awful and I wasn’t going to do it, until I was told firmly and unapologetically that I was exhausting and I needed to shut up.

But I knew deep down that it was the best I could make it. I knew that maybe I could make a few more adjustments, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t make that huge of a difference. So I pulled up my big girl panties and I just sent it. Panicked afterwards, pretty hard, but it was done. It’s out of my hands. It’s in someone else’s, and they get to make the decision. And even as I hate waiting, even as it will tear me up in the next couple of month while I wait for the answer, even though I will be a nuisance to those I hold dearest…it off. It’s no longer in my control. And weirdly, there is a comfort in that.

I can’t control what happens next, but I can control my reaction to it. And I am preparing myself for either outcome. And that’s all I can do.

Well…that and start working on the next one…

It’s kind of bittersweet when I finish up a story and get it ready to submit. That’s what I’m doing this week, making the final tweaks and changes and edits. Polishing it up. Writing the synopsis, which I hate, and then composing the email to send it off.

At that point I’ll have a flat out panic attack, wringing my hands and barely able to breathe until the best friend, who will be holding my hand, gives me a smack and tells me just to do it.

And that’s when I’m still worried and scared–because no one wants to face rejection right?–but I also get a weird sort of calm. Because it’s out of my hands, I’ve done what I could, and now it’s up to others to decide if it’s going to be published. I hate the waiting to hear. It’s sort of excruciating. But at the same time, I’m half removed from it because there’s nothing I can do. (That’s not to say I don’t have random panic attacks during which any number of people in my life have to say “dude, chill” though I am not a dude and I am almost never chill. Heh.)

But I’m ahead of myself, a bit. I’m not quite there yet though I’m hoping to be by the end of this upcoming weekend. I’m still tweaking and editing. And then I have to read it through, start to finish, to try and make it the very best it can be. And then I can get to all that other stuff. That’s my goal for this weekend…to get to the worrying.

When I was younger, I was convinced that February 29th was some kind of magical day. It only came around once every four years, so it had to be special right? I used to image how cool it would have been to be born on this day (though I ignored the fact that I would have to have been born a year and 19 days earlier). I used to pretend it was the day that some sort of veil between the realms would weaken and beings from elsewhere could cross through (I cut my teeth on fantasy at a young age).

Only later did I learn how it could be a topsy-turvy sort of day of love, where women could propose to their men instead of the other way around. To my impressionable young mind, this thrilled me. I was an independent sort, back then, and thought I would take this tradition to heart. That I’d been the one to do the proposing, and I’d make it romantic and magical and it would be awesome.

I know better now. I know that the veil is always thin, and that women can propose whenever the hell they want, and it doesn’t have to be to a man either. But I still celebrate this day with a sort of fondness, enjoying the crap out of it every time it comes around.

So do something special for yourself today. Just because you can.

It might be weird, but I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

It’s not as strange as it sounds. At least, I don’t think. Because when I’m in the shower, I have two things working for me that allow my mind to wander. The water pouring down turns into white noise, and then I’m easily able to block out the outside world. And I don’t have to think about what I’m physically doing. Muscle memory has me repeating the washing steps–hair, body, face–without much input from higher brain function. With these two things combined, that plotting part of my brain is able to just go off anywhere it wants to.

I’ve been struck my true inspiration while getting clean. I’ve untangled plot snares and figured out how to patch over plot holes. I’ve created whole new worlds and characters in the span of a ten minute shower. I’ve even been known to get in the shower when I’m particularly stuck and can’t make my mind work, just to see if it shakes things loose.

The point? This morning’s shower was productive besides just getting myself clean. I know have characters, and the first scene, of a new work. Or rather, those things that have been percolating have now solidified into real, tangible things. If it continues apace, it’ll be the next on on the docket. There are things about it that I really love, and I’m looking forward to writing this one.

In other news, internal edits still continue on His Needs and after I shape it up nice and pretty, I’ll submit it for consideration. Watch this space for updates!