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...

Demon's Asylum Free Through Valentine's Day

Just in time for Valentine's Day, my gay male erotic romance Demon's Asylum is free at Amazon.com! Tonight and tomorrow you can download the novella at no charge.

Set in London in 1794, this Aether Vitalis story follows George Wickham, a human who can see supernatural creatures for what they are. When a truth spell gets Wickham thrown in Bedlam asylum, he's dismayed to discover that his doctor, Thomas Thornton, is a vampire in hiding.

Thornton, a murderer with a tragic past, is intrigued first by Wickham's ability, but that quickly takes second place to the camaraderie of shared secrets; not only can Wickham see monsters, he's gay--a secret which could destroy his social standing and everything he's worked for since his lover Edwin died.

But somewhere out there is the person who set him up, and this unknown enemy isn't finished with Wickham yet. As the stakes get raised, Wickham's only ally is the vampire he's falling in love with. But with Thornton becoming increasingly possessive, is Wickham's greatest threat from his persecutor, or his lover?

Photoshop, Layouts, and Eyestrain

Ok, so I didn't get any of the writing done last month that I wanted to. But I did complete one Adobe Photoshop class and start another, mostly completed the print edition book cover (have to finish the logo, but the rest is done), and am about a third of the way through doing the layout of the print edition. I had hoped to finish it this weekend, but then The Bulldog got into some stuff he shouldn't have, and long story short, I didn't get ANYTHING done on Sunday.

But! I'm hoping to have the layout done soon! The logo shouldn't take me long either. My eyes are killing me though. I stare at a computer all day at my day job, and while I'm used to doing that and then writing, doing that and then staring at photo pixels or the shape of text (while trying not to read it) is a whole other level of eyestrain.

I have to tell you, it is majorly exciting to see the full cover layout. Not only is it super cool, but I get the whole "I did that!" feeling when I look at it.

I did do a little bit of editing on Demon's Asylum, a new Aether Vitalis novella which is my next release. Also, I got a start on the cover, which was great because I had no idea what I was going to do for the cover on that one. And then I was futzing around in Photoshop class and found some stock art and hey-presto, background for the novella cover. Sweet!

Long-time readers may remember me talking about project 1794 now and again. That's Demon's Asylum. I originally started it in late 2009, but then my cousin died and my writing went to hell for a little bit. I'm trying to focus really hard on getting the print edition done this month, but I'm going to try really hard to get Demon's Asylum ready for you all as well.

The story takes place in London in 1794. George Wickham has been able to see supernatural creatures for what they are since he was born, so maybe getting thrown into Bedlam asylum was inevitable. But Wickham knows better; he was set up. He finds an unexpected ally in his doctor, two-hundred-year-old vampire Thomas Thornton, but when the two men become lovers, Wickham realizes he's only traded one danger for another, with no way of knowing which is the more deadly.

Thank Yous, Updates, Reviews, Etc

Hey all. Kinda swapping this time: did the long post on Friday and the short post on Tuesday. But I am beat. Just spent 2.5 hours redoing the cover for Scent and Shadow so it'll look right for the print version. I more or less had to start from scratch, but fortunately I've got it just about right now. A few more tweaks and I'll be ready to dive into formatting the manuscript for print as well.

I love the creative control of self-publishing, but wow, it's a lot of work!

Lots of huge thank-yous to everyone who has liked or commented or reviewed one of my stories! Some of the reviews for Scent and Shadow nearly had me in tears! I'm so happy that it seems to be coming across exactly the way I wanted it to. SQUEE! I mean, what's a book without readers, you know?

Speaking of squee, "Not Quite Casper" finally got marked down to free in the Kindle store. As of right now, it's #174 Free in the store, and #11 in the Kindle ebooks erotica category! Check it out if you haven't, it's a fun one. (And did I mention it's free?)

Hopefully they'll mark down "A Wild Hunt" soon too. C'mon, Amazon, everbody's doing it.

I hope to have another new story for y'all this month. (I know, I'm getting down to the wire here.) Next month for sure if not this month. I should also (hopefully) have a new anthology sale to share next month too.

For all my fellow Americans, have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving! See you all on Friday!

The Mythology of Vampires

Funny that I should decide to do this post this week; the Dead Robots just had a conversation touching on how monsters have changed over the last few decades. (Congrats on 200 episodes, guys!)

One of the fun things about writing is that you get to make your own mythology. There are so many legends and tales, and they’ve been done so many ways over the years, that yes, even sparkly vampires with skin like rock make sense after awhile. (I kinda felt they were more gargoyle-like, but hey. Once you got into it a little bit, it was an interesting take on the mythology.)

When I first started writing about Gabriel and Amanda, I had to decide very quickly what some of the basic tenets of my vampires were going to be. Some things changed over time, and the biology got more and more refined, but there were two basic things that I knew I wanted to define my vampires: no sunlight, and the need to kill.

Long before Twilight, there were stories about vampires that could go out in the day. Some, like My Best Friend is a Vampire (and, more recently, the Kim Harrison novels), differentiated between “living” vampires and “dead” or “undead” vampires. Other authors went for a special talisman approach (LJ Smith’s Vampire Diaries) or a special condition, such as being able to be in sunlight if the vampire had fed recently (Kindred: The Embraced).

While I enjoyed all of those versions (yes, even Kindred: the Embarrassed), I decided it made things too easy. Vampires can be hugely powerful. The thing that keeps them in check more than anything else is the problem with sunlight. It’s also instant conflict. Things getting boring? Just add sunlight! (Fortunately, I’ve never had to fall back on that one yet.)

There were also a lot of stories where vampires didn’t have to kill, or even feed on humans (again, long before Twilight). Heck, I used to roleplay a vegetarian Gangrel. (Yes, White Wolf used vegetarian for animal-only vampires long before Twilight did.) But I wanted my vampires to be monsters. Even back then (daydreamer that I am) I had intellectual property aspirations, and I wanted to make sure that no one playing in my universe later on could pussify my vampires. So not only do my vampires have to drink human blood, they have to kill. In fact, they have to kill a lot. Every night for the first ten years or so, and they usually don’t learn enough control to feed without killing the human until they’ve been a vampire for close to fifty years.

After that, it got down to the details. Hypnosis? Heck yeah, it’s too much fun to leave out. But then I decided I needed a foil for the charismatic vamps, which is where the skinshifters’ psychic immunity came from. (And then I needed to explain it, but I’ll get to that in another post.) Mirrors? Not having a reflection struck me as very silly, although it’s been done well (the Vampire Files spring to mind), and I couldn’t think of a good reason that made sense physics-wise, so my vampires have reflections. Ditto for garlic and running water, although I could certainly see a river spirit refusing to let a vampire pass, for some reason. (Running water is still good for screwing up a scent trail, and my vamps are big on scent.)

Originally, my vampires could change shape. I eventually did away with that, as it was too convenient, and I couldn’t see why, mythologically and physically speaking, they should have that ability. (Note: Empusa is not a vampire. She’s what the vampires were modeled after.)

To me, retractable fangs make sense. My vampires are supposed to be able to live among humans. This is also why they aren’t preternaturally beautiful. They have abilities which allow them to charm and attract and fascinate, but they also want to be able to not attract attention. Especially once I decided they were territorial, it made huge amounts of sense for them to blend in as much as possible, because otherwise people will start wondering why that gorgeous hunk they keep seeing around town never seems to get older.

The territorial thing was a later addition. As I started thinking beyond Gabriel to vampires in general, I had to decide whether they had communities. Was there structure, government, laws and consequences? If so, what kept the vampires from taking over Lumley-like? If not, then why not?

I eventually decided against organized vampires. I hate politics, and it was another way to put limits on creatures that were already pretty darn powerful. I took some lessons from nature: predators who marked out a territory, protected their food sources, and only allowed interlopers for reproductive purposes--in this case, keeping the young around long enough that they can learn to take care of themselves. And then I had to explain why and how, and got caught up in world-builder's disease again. (I'm going to assume no one but me cares about the cellular biology of vampires.)

What are your favorite bits of vampire lore? What conventions do you hate? Which version of vampires is your favorite? Leave a comment and let me know!

Finally! Ebooks are Available!

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What is Aether Vitalis?

Aether Vitalis is the series name for my stories wherein the rules of the universe work in specific ways. You'll see the name attached to stories as the stories become available as single titles. The series does not, as a whole, follow any particular character or set of characters, although some characters will recur frequently.

A lot of my stories have paranormal elements, but not all of them do. Truthfully, any story set in the reality we're all used to could be an Aether Vitalis story, but the stories marked as Aether Vitalis are stories where the there is a definite touch of the paranormal consistent with the rules of the Aether Vitalis universe.

And just what are the rules?

When I started figuring all this stuff out, I decided I wanted a story universe that explained the real world. I tried to reason out exactly how (insert supernatural thingie here) would work in the real universe, assuming things like conservation of energy and mass, and postulating additional factors like aether (think dark matter, or neutrinos) and vitality (life). I won't go into the minutiae here, mostly because I suffer from world-builder's disease and I doubt many of you care about how quantum physics relates to my fiction. (Although eventually I will have a webpage for stuff like that.) Instead, here are some things that you can count on from an Aether Vitalis story:

Vampires kill people. A lot. In fact, they have to, especially when they're young. There are no vampires who feed on animals, or through blood banks, or on fake blood. Vampires are a very specialized predator/parasite, and need not only blood but human energy in order to survive. They are also territorial, so you don't get big bunches of them hanging out together and plotting how to take over the world, although a few can coexist in the same city if it's a very large city and the vampires are all hunting different demographics. (And for you folklore fans, they do have reflections, but the sun sets them on fire. Also, no soulmates. I promise.)

The most common type of shapeshifter (though certainly not the only kind) are the skinshifters. (Although they're called pookhas in Britain and other names in other places.) The skinshifters are a type of faerie, whose ancestors broke away from the control of the gentry, the faerie ruling class. Unfortunately, as part of the breaking away, the skinshifters became mortal. Their forms were also limited. Before, they were purely aethereal-bodied creatures and could be anything. Now, most skinshifters are born with two skins, and the rest have to be "acquired." While they still have their aethereal form, it's rare for a skinshifter to spend much time in it, as they become ridiculously susceptible to magic while out of their skins. On the upside, they handle metal and technology better than most of the other fae.

Speaking of magic, there are a lot of different kinds of magic. (Magic being the generic term for the act of using purely energical means to influence matter, energy, vitality, or probability, regardless of method.) The generic term for a magic-user is mage. Beyond that, it depends on where you get the energy from, and what you do with it, and how you do it: sorcery, necromancy, theurgy, witchery, demonology, voodoo, shamanism...

Separate from magic (especially if you ask the mages) is psionics. Psionics are human psychic gifts, and they come in three main flavors: Extrapathy – energy influencing other energy or vitality (ie the mind or the soul); Extracognition – energy gathering information (not from vitality); and Extrakinesis – energy influencing matter or probability. Of course, I have the lexicon; the characters don't, so they are often less precise with their terminology. Extrapathic gifts are the most common, and extrakinetic gifts the most rare, based purely on genetics.

And there are gods. There are the gods that we would call gods, and then there are the gods that our gods call gods.

Of course, there's lots that I haven't touched on yet (especially in Faerie!) but this should give you some idea of the kinds of creatures and forces you might encounter in an Aether Vitalis story.