Counting Down

At the end of this month, I officially become unemployed. I've talked about it before, and while there are still some lingering mixed emotions, for the most part, I'm ready to be done and out of here. My employer extended my position for one more month before it transitions to California, so I could finish up fiscal year end programs and tasks. Unfortunately, IT never got the word, and they shut off my network account. I still can't get back into many of the systems I need to complete the tasks I stayed on for. It's been frustrating, but on the plus side, it's given me a few weeks where I was able to work on and wrap up two of my manuscripts.

I got good news about one this morning- the third book in my Marchand BDSM romance series has been accepted by Sizzler Editions. Sadly, I still don't have a title, but I have a few ideas (and if anyone has any suggestions, I'll take them! lol) It's an equestrian eventing set tale, which is why coming up with a title has been a bit tricky – horses, BDSM - wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea! :D  I don't have any further information yet, but will be sharing as I get it.

I also wrapped up Warrior's Wrath and sent that off to Pink Flamingo, though now I'm in a bit of a panic because I think I left something out of a scene, but I'm not looking. I figure my editor will point it out if I did and since there's nothing I can do about it at the moment, no use making myself sick over it unless I really have to.

I've also been spending the last several days revising The Night Club – my next vampire romance. This book has been in the works for a very long time. I first wrote it shortly after I finished The Taste of Magic, in 2003! Various events conspired to knock me out of the writing game for a bit – the unexpected pregnancy with my son and his infant and toddler years, specifically. Babies take a brutal toll on the creative juices. Thankfully, we're done with those days.

In any case, when I got back to writing, I took a huge detour from that book and tried something new. Some of you know I tested myself by writing a very popular Harry Potter fan fiction (Dramione, anyone?). It got such a good response that the darn thing took on a life of its own and really helped my confidence (I will advise you don't go looking for it, it's been removed from all the sites where it once appeared).  From there, the Marchand series was born. One thing led to another, and I wrote Warrior's Vengeance, which was another book I started back in my early days. Since my goals and genres changed drastically, I didn't give the vampire book a second thought.

Until I re-released The Taste of Magic. It did very well, so I dusted off The Night Club and decided to revise it. Turns out, this baby needs a whole lot of re-writing. Not only was it written back when my voice was significantly different, there are a lot of issues with the writing in general. Too much passive voice, more telling than I'd prefer, and plotlines that go off in all sorts of directions. I've been deleting a lot of things, streamlining the plot and cutting down on the word count. It's still over 90K at this point, but I suspect it'll wrap up around 80-85K when all is said and done.

Once that's complete, I'll be starting my next series, which I talked about before – Vikings! I have plots for two books. The History Channel show has inspired me so much, and last week's episode was particularly awesome! Hail Earl Ragnar!  lol  I'm inspired, motivated and excited to get started. And with the next several months of actually having time to write, I'm salivating waiting for May to come!