Thursday, February 28, 2013

New Release: The Twelve Huntsmen

March's new release is a retelling of a classic fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. The original "the Twelve Huntsmen" had some issues with it, to my mind. For one, there was no real point in there being twelve huntsmen. Second, the ending was a let-down. Not only was it anti-climactic, but it weakened what had been one of the few strong princesses in the book. (To be fair, I've only read about a third of the stories so far. I'm talking the Household Tales, not the shorter versions of the book.)

So I "fixed" it to bring it in line with what a modern reader expects out of a story. The result is a tale with all the classic rhythm and atmosphere you remember from the Brothers Grimm, but with consistent characters and a plot that nicely wraps up all the fun fairy tale tropes introduced in the story.

"The Twelve Huntsmen: a Short Fairy Tale" is the first in a new series I'm calling "Grimm as it Should've Been." It's available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Just checkin' in

Hey all. It's been a little while since I posted. (Duh.) So here I am for a random hello.

Two new stories have been released so far this year. The first was Disobedience, an erotic Aether Vitalis vampire short story. I really love this one, because it's all about one of my favorite things: really unbalanced, unhealthy relationships! And vampires. And kink, and m/f, and m/m. So much fun.

This month I released a new Just for Kinks story called Bound Behind Glass. The story involves a girl roleplaying as an android bound inside a glass sex machine, and a club full of people with access to the controls. Need I say more?

March's new release will be for a brand-new series of short stories. Stay tuned!

So, back to me. I'm currently slightly sick, sore throat mostly. I'm downing hot sour soup and irish hot toddies like mad. Slept until noon, which is very unlike me. It's one of the ways I know I'm actually sick, and not just having some sort of psychosomatic depression-induced illness.

I just finished a 6-week cover design workshop from Dean Wesley Smith and WMG Publishing. I really liked it. The first couple weeks were mostly review (at least, for me anyway), but after that it got real in a hurry! So now I'm looking at rebranding all the Aether Vitalis and Just for Kinks covers. The JFKs will look more or less like the cover for Bound Behind Glass. Here's a preview of Scent and Shadow's redesigned ebook cover:

I'm also going to be taking a short workshop on Audacity soon, which will remove one of my major mental obstacles regarding the Scent and Shadow audiobook. Yes, I could probably find all this info on the internets, but frankly I'm shorter on time and energy than money on this one. I bought my microphone last year, so once I have a feel for the software I think I'll be much more confident about getting started. I'm hoping to have the podiobook up later this year. (Of course, I said that last year too...)

And I'm finally, finally making progress on Empire's Shadow! I'm picking away at it in tiny chunks, but it's still progress, and today will be day 16 in my streak of writing every day. Woohoo! I couldn't have done it without the Magic Spreadsheet. I even wrote 255 words when I was down in Chicago with friends this weekend with the help of Doc² on my iPod. I'm in love with the system I've got going at the moment. Now to slowly increase my daily word count goal, and hopefully add in a second short daily session so I can have one for Empire's Shadow and one for the monthly short story...