Avril Ashton's Blog, page 9

Update

Time for an update!

Wheee. I see you over there rubbing your hands together in glee.

We’re at 20k. The Facebook crew gets a teaser a day, sometimes more. Yes, I know I should stop spoiling them.

Not gonna go into detail about anything, mostly cause I don’t have details. Y’all know I knows nuthin ’bout nuthin until its actually typed on the page. Lots of tears so far. Yes. Already I’m all cried out. Now, I know you hear about the tears, and you start sending up the Hail Marys and kissing the rosary beads… as well you should. But it’s not that bad.

Swear.

Not on a dozen cupcakes, but I do swear. It’s only going to hurt for about 45% of the book.

Okay 95%.

Kidding.

I am kidding.

Nah, but for real. I’m going to try my hardest to make it good for you, which definitely includes making sure only honest emotions are present. No angst for the sake of angst, just honesty. Which means things will hurt, men like Tek and Quinn can do nothing but hurt until they’re ready to stop. They will make that decision, but it is my job to bring you the entire process. Not just the happy bits.

Tek is my love. He gives me the impossible theme that permeates all my books.

Meaning…

It is impossible for others not to see, and feel, the connection Tek and Elias share when they’re in the same room. They went through something raw and intimate, so it’s impossible for them not to have formed a bond. But… It is impossible for Elias to feel any other way for Tek other than that friendly love. He is loyal to Tek as he’s loyal to Is. He will battle to the death for Tek, but it’s the same protection he feels for Is. It’s impossible for him to give Tek what he craves, just as it is impossible for Tek to not be IN love with Elias. Elias gave Tek more than he ever realized. It is also impossible for me to downplay those feelings, gloss over it, pretend it’s not real since it drives nearly everything Tek does. Therefore it’s impossible for me to shy away from tackling that topic, showing it to you, uncomfortable as it will be.

And lastly, it is impossible for Tek to not go off the fucking rails when what he’s felt for Elias for all these long anguished years gets eclipsed by something staggeringly different.

Feelings for Quinn.

Yep.

This isn’t an insta-love type situation. This is a slow tearing down of walls, and a steady building of something both men need, but are battling against. They like their status-quo. They like the lives they have when we first meet them. They want nothing more, at least nothing foreign. So being stubborn, fucked up, self-destructive men, they will do everything they possibly can to wipe away the fragile thing arching between them.

It’s delicious to watch, but painful too.

Save You will be divided into three parts. Part One is all the events from Body You, which sorta is the foundation. They meet, they clash, they form a grudging something. Whatever the hell that is. Then Part Two is about Unmask You, which gives us all kinds of good shit. But as you caught a glimpse, it brings bad stuff too.

It is during the Unmask You period that we get to see Tek, where we get to meet the true him. And what a raw, damaged yet strong man he is. Treacherous, too, in a way I’m simply salivating to show you. There’s more than a tinge of psychotic in our darling Tek.

Have I mentioned yet that I love him? He’s my love.

I always gravitate to the most dangerous one.

So that’s the update. I worked up a FAQ page the other day, answering all the questions I get asked over and over. I can’t give you a release date for Save You. I’m writing it, and when it will be finished is anyone’s guess. I’m just here plugging away.

If you don’t hear from me in a while, an email checking up is always welcome. Or send cake. You know I only leave my desk for cake.

On Faith and Surprises

Before I lost my heart to MM romance, I wanted to write erotic romance with women with the same skin color like mine. I’ve been OD’ing on romance books since I was twelve or so, and most of the heroines on the pages were definitely not who I saw in the mirror.

The books were out there, for sure, but I wanted them to be more…harder, nastier, not so nice, and not so clean. So I decided to write the book I wanted to read.

I wrote A Wicked Ride. Created the Wicked series. I still have fans from those day, I think. Some of you made the move with me when I branched out in the Gay Romance lane (thank you), and some of you didn’t, choosing instead to wait for me to come back around and grace you with some of that hetero-style reading. Thank you, too.

I wrote three books in that series, and when the time came to write the fourth, thus tying up all the loose threads, my brain refused to cooperate. I still get the emails asking WTF happened to book four. Okay, so the wording is a lot nicer.

Boys have taken over my mind, for sure. The boys bring in the money, for sure. The boys are way more popular, for sure. But see, the Wicked series is where I cut my teeth on writing erotic. Where I got over the blushing at describing oral sex and anal sex, and just plain nasty sex.

Good times.

But the Wicked series have long stopped making me any kind of financial gain. No, it’s not always about the money, but this is my job. Av gotta get paid. $10 every three or so months definitely wasn’t cutting it. I’d always entertained the idea of requesting the rights back, but the contracts all expired and automatically renewed when I was busy doing something else, so I figured I’d have to wait another three years. I shrugged it off. Put my mind to other things. But yesterday, I bit the bullet asked the question.

I was scared out of my mind.

Why?

Why would I be afraid to ask for what belonged to me, to what I put my blood, sweat, tears and heart into? Why would I have knots in my stomach communicating with my publisher?

After the experiences I’ve had with a particular shady pub, I can’t help but look at everyone through those jaundiced lenses. I can’t help but expect negativity from the outset.

Why?

Why would I be surprised, shocked to the point of tears when I get a positive response from a publisher? Why would I be freaked out and emotional that a publisher does the right thing just because?

One decides to treat you like shit, like you’re less than, and suddenly everyone gets to pay for that. It is unfair that I’m shocked that I got treated right and fairly. It is beyond fucked up.

That is how it is nowadays.

Doing what I had to do has been difficult. Just sending that simple three line email request was an exercise in torture. I was shaking.

Why, though?

It’s senseless, but it is what it is.

So I officially have my rights back.

I am stunned.

Those books now belong sorely to me and with me they’ll stay. I’ll re-edit them, yes. Republish them, yes. And finally write that long-awaited book four, yes. No time soon. No timetable, but there is hope for it. For them.

It’s Bout That Time

It’s just about to be that time again when I start writing another book.

Yes.

I’ve written about 4 chapters worth of Tek and Quinn, but that was months ago. So now, I get to fully immerse myself in all that fuckery.

Somebody better send me cupcakes and wine after this, is all I’m saying.

Quick rundown for those of you who weren’t at the slumber party in my FB group.

Save You will encompass Body You and run through Unmask You. Meaning, Tek and Quinn’s story runs right through those books. They meet and begin their special brand of fucked up dance in Body You. All the instances in Body You: When Tek first goes to Quinn’s house after Israel set them up, what happened after they were shot up when Is woke to find Quinn in the motel room, the entire hospital shit from when Quinn runs out on Xavier to Tek going to find him, to what the hell went down after Is ordered Tek to drive Quinn home.

Everything that went down in Unmask You happens smack dab in the middle of their story, so what the fuck is Tek doing with Stavros when he’s jonseing for Quinn? Don’t ask me.

Shit.

I don’t know either.

The dynamic between Tek and my darling Stavros…YASS, I said darling. I love him. *hugs Stav tight* I’ll have to trudge through the fuckery to figure out the actual dynamic between them, so yes, you will see a whole heck of a lot of Stavros.

He’s so deliciously devious. I’m not done with him yet. No, for now, I don’t have a story for him. I just know he’s not finished fucking with our mens. I bet after what he did to Is, our Jamaican wants to shoot him up. I better hide Stav from Is LOL

Speaking of Is, I wrote a little thingy between him and Reggie immediately following the news about who his parents are.

I keep saying nothing is coincidental. There is absolutely a reason Dutch, Patel, and Van show up in Unmask You. I have nothing to report on that front yet. I’ll post if I do. Emailing to ask won’t change that, but please, rest assured I got you.

Alrighty. I’ll be back when I have more things to say.

More

Now that Elias and Lucky are out, of course the next question is Tek, when? How soon?

Now a lot of you are already running scared ‘cause of that whole teaser thing there. Don’t blame ya. I wish I could say it gets better. The truth is, even though I have no concrete knowledge of what the book will be about, I do know it gets worse before it gets better.

Already I worry that it might be too much. While I do bring the pain, I don’t do it just because. Or to titillate. I seem to gravitate to fucked up characters, or maybe my fucked up brain can only attract that sort.

Dunno.

It’s foreign to me, the idea of writing about nice people. They don’t appeal. I’m sure they’re all lovely, and sometimes I envy the authors who can write really sweet, nice characters, who are just honorable and alluring like that. My brain can’t handle nice things LOL

As a reader I gravitate to the anti-hero stories, so it’s no wonder the author in me feels the same way. I write for me, what I like to read. But here’s the rub, lately I haven’t been able handle reading those types. After I finish bleeding over my own boys, I find I have nothing left to give to any other characters. So yeah, I get the whole wanting to shy away from reading about all of that pain. That angst.

Good news is…

Well, I can’t find anything that remotely resembles good news. But I’m gonna try damn hard to make the pain worth it, yeah? I will balance out the hurt with the love, I will give you as much laughter as I do death, and there’ll be as much cum spilled as blood.

Hey, there’s that good news I been searching for.

There isn’t much to say about Tek and Quinn. You know most of what I know just reading those two chapters. I might have about point five percent more info than you. They reveal things to me only once I start writing in earnest. All I know is that those two men are broken and bloodied and on the brink of just… disaster.

So do we even fix them? Can they be fixed? Do they want to be? And how would that work, is it kinda like the blind leading the blind?

Quinn is ashamed of his sexuality now. He’s afraid to touch and be touched. He punishes himself, as you saw. And is suicidal. Like for real, for real.

Tek has that love thing for who he shouldn’t, and fucking around with who he shouldn’t. And there’s the drugs and whatever hold Stavros has on him. Then there’s the family’s legacy he has to deal with and the fiancée and… You get the gist.

What being with Tek requires, Quinn is beyond unable to provide. And what being with Quinn entails, Tek is absolutely the last man he should look at to provide it.

Impossible love.

It appears that is my specialty. And pretty soon I’ll be here posting and moaning and groaning about just what in the fuck I was thinking. I’m also excited to find out more about these two men. I especially want to know Tek. Quinn we know. We know why and how he is the way he is. Tek is the mystery. Tek is the enigma. Tek is who I’m crushing on right now.

Nothing gets me all revved up like a fucked up character. I’m saying, the sex doesn’t give me lady boners as much as the violence does. Hm.

Weird Av is weird.

I know.

Don’t forget to rate/review Unmask You when you’re done reading. Your honest opinion is always welcomed.

I’m off to build my Tek and Quinn playlist.

 

By Now…

…Everyone should know that Elias and Lucky are out there in the wild. If you didn’t know, this is your heads up. We’ll pardon you as you run off to snag your copy.

The days immediately following hitting “publish” are a weird mix of fright and exhilaration. I’m as lost as can be, always the same after I put a book out. For a little while my mind is idle and veers off into a thousand different directions, trying to find a focus and feeling out the next set of characters at the same time.

So right now, I’m adrift while still getting glimpses of Tek and Quinn. Nothing concrete, because I don’t want it to be concrete. I want to languish in this latest achievement. I want to bask in sweetness of having accomplished yet another thing that I set out to do.

Which is rock you. Make you feel.

That’s all I want. I’m not greedy.

Much.

I’m not giving myself a schedule for when I’m gonna start writing Tek. Not going to put myself on any deadlines. When Tek is ready for me he’ll let me know. I need to be ready for him, so I’ll be preparing.

This book 4 is going to be dark. Darker than anything I’ve ever done. It’s gonna hurt deeper than anything I’ve ever written. That’s just the way it is. I only know about 5% of Tek’s story, and even that is shaky and filled with questions. I don’t know who he is yet.

But I will.

And when I do know that’s when I start writing. In the meantime…

Here’s his cover.

Add it to your Goodreads shelves

Don’t forget to rate/leave a review for Unmask You. That’s the best way to show your love. And I will forever appreciate it.

Off to twiddle my thumbs and stare at the ceiling.

New Release!

Hey all. Happy Friday.

(Watch Me) Unmask You is now live on Amazon and All Romance. Kobo, B&N and iBooks will be a bit slower to come online, but I wanted to let you know. Go forth and grab that. Read, rate, review.

Then hit me up to yell at me.

I’m ready. *wink*

The Fear…

So I’m back. These past few days I’ve been walking around with a knot in my stomach. Any why, do you ask, is Av all knotted?

Why do you think? Other people are reading my work!

OHMAHGAH. You have no idea. Or maybe you do, after all I do bitch and moan a lot. Okay. So I sent Unmask You to be beta’d. Then I start worrying. It’s what I do. Then I make myself open the original file and look it over and guess what?

It’s a freaking mess and a half. Meaning my poor betas have a fucked up file.

All right. I do the hyper ventilating thing. Okay. I panic. I panic. Then I shut myself off of social media and I get to work fixing it. Rewriting it. I mean I redid shit. I added shit. I deleted shit. I nastied up shit. I was just plain doing shit.

Then I had to hit them up and apologize.

Oye. So after I was satisfied with what I had done, I re-sent. Then sent the corrected file to be proofread. Oh my Lord havis mercy. I don’t know how in the hell I do this shit. It is nerve wracking on a good day, people. So I’m not hearing anything and I’m just sinking down and down into the doubts. Letting it just take me over and eat me up.

I don’t know how it is I’m not an alcoholic yet.

Then boom. Back to back responses.

They love it.

Swear to you. I was in bed alone. Watching some shit on TV. And when I read that email I just covered my eyes and teared up. You guys. You don’t freaking know.

I’m a tough chick. Yep. But I care about this shit right here. And if this was the already published version and it was out there for public consumption then I would’ve been like hey, it is what it is. Because once out there, it’s no longer mine. It’s yours. But right now, it’s mine. My baby. And I want you to like it, damn it.

Love it even.

Okay. I am very much still emotional and I suspect I will be for quite some time yet. But I wanted to share with you this, my weird shit. Be back soon with more news.

A Valentine’s Day Update

Happy Valentine’s Day, my loves.

Hope you’re spending it with those you love. It’s not a big deal in my house, never has been, but our daughter is really into it this year and has decided her dad and I are her Valentine. So we’re gonna take her out to do stuff.

Not sure what yet.

I wanted to let you know that Unmask You is in the beta stage. Wherein my beta readers will go over the story with a fine-tooth comb and let me know what’s working and what isn’t. Then I’ll go through and fix, then send it out to be beta’d again.

I’ve been seeing/hearing that there’s a release date set. I heard Feb 1st and Feb 15th. Nope. I just finished dealing with those boys and they’re in no way ready for public consumption. No idea where that came from, but if you’re ever in doubt about anything you should always feel free to hit me up and ask.

Facebook. Twitter. Email. Via the Contact Me page.

I’ve been pretty clear in saying that I’ll let you know when I have a date set. Still don’t have one. I’m not sure what—and how many—fixes I’ll need to make when the beats are finished so I don’t want to lock myself into something then have to change it and disappoint you.

I’ll definitely keep you up to date.

So, to recap.

The boys are being Beta’d.

No release date has been set.

I’ll let you know when things change.

Good talk

Revision Update

This here’s an update on my revising drama.

I make no secret of the fact that my first drafts are all fucked up messes that need serious overhaul. It just is the way it is. Unmask You seems to be in another class all its own when it comes to meh-ness.

Now, I have a certain idea as to where my talents lay. And given the right time and headspace I can work any kind of magic. I just had the idea, after finishing that first draft, that Unmask You lacked… the spark. The punch. The drama. The angst.

It lacked the throat-clenching emotion the story should have.

Which means I have to now work extra hard to make sure I infuse it when doing the revisions. But I kinda let myself wallow in the whole “the book is the worst ever” and “I can’t do this” and “I suck and now everyone else will know it, too”. That emotion is fierce here for me. I go through this with all the books, I think I told you that, but here and now it seems to be way more pronounced.

I thought about deleting the entire thing. Yep. All 62, 995 words. Thought about starting from scratch.

One of the main reasons—I think—it wasn’t working, was likely because Tek isn’t in it. I mean, he’s in it, he’s mentioned and stuff, but he’s not on-screen. That was a deliberate move on my part because the way I feel about Tek, I think if he shows up everyone else will sorta fade into the background. I fear the story will become about him when I really can’t let that happen.

So I’ve been forcing Tek to stay away.

No more. Tek is going to make his appearance.

Okay.

Once I made that decision, I was good with it. Haven’t written that scene yet, but I kinda/sorta have an idea what’s gonna go down. I’m cool with it because it’s gonna push the story forward even more.

That’s always the objective. I don’t do wasted scenes. Every word/scene/line of dialogue has a specific purpose. Which is why I’m always warning you guys to pay attention, keep on your Ps and Qs. LOL

With Tek taken care of, I go through and read the story again. What I find is what happens to me every single time. It’s like I deliberately block out how fucking fire my shit is.

Total modesty right there.

It’s as if as soon as I type “THE END” my brain shuts down and tells me everything sucks and it blocks me, messes with my mind until I actually rustle up the courage to go back and read it.

So… Good news. That sumbitch is not as bad as I’d first feared.

Uh-uh.

As I type, the book is at 230 pages. 62, 995 words. But I have to add at least threes scenes. Two of which are some nasty sexy times. And the other is Tek. So the word count is gonna go up. We love that yeah?

So I’ll be back when I finish revising, to let you know when they’re in the hands of the betas.

Still no release date set, but you’ll be the first to know.

The END

I reached the end of the first draft of Unmask You. I mention it every now and again that when I hit that particular milestone it really is always a massive pile of fuck. As the book stands now, it sucks. Nothing makes sense. Someone has like three different last names within a chapter. I reference shit I haven’t even mentioned in the story. At all. I give no bask story, no details. I don’t even know how many chapters I have. I always stop writing chapter numbers by about the fourth one. It’s just “chapter”, instead of say “chapter five, chapter seven”.

I think if you were to read that mess right now, you’d burn me out of your life.

LOL It’s how I do things. It works for me and believe it or not, what comes next is the easy part.

I have to completely gut the beginning. Like, just delete it and write a new chapter one. Because things happened in later chapters that let me know the way I have chapter one now isn’t going to work.

I rarely ever go with full emotion when I write the stuff. So as of right now, even though Elias is this dude who goes around killing people, he’s not bad. He’s not tough. He’s not fucked up. This is what I do next, in the second go round. I add in the emotion.

I was thinking to myself yesterday, that the damn thing is one boring ass read. And the only time real and tangible emotion comes through right now, is through sex. And even that is pure vanilla, that soft serve shit. Second round is where I lay on the nasty stuff.

So you can say that the first draft is me drawing/constructing a box, and the second round is where I color inside that box, or fill it with stuff.

I mean I always hate my stuff by the time I type the end. There’s this thing that lets me know it’s all crap. So I go with that and I accept it, and I work my deliciously taut ass off to make it better.

I had to make some changes. For one, I wanted to write a little novella about what happened in Riker’s. Not gonna do it. Mostly because I don’t have the time, but also I’ve decided that I want the full impact of what went down to hit you in Tek’s book.

Oh, I mention it in Unmask you. Can’t not do that. But it’s not gonna be truly felt until you get to Tek.

What’s mostly messing with me in this story is the timeline. It needs to be a certain way since I talked about it in Body You. So since that is now set in stone, I have to keep it and work with it and make it make sense.

There are still some of my new readers who haven’t read the Brooklyn Sinners, and while I no longer have those books on my website, they’re easy enough to find once you search my name on Amazon or B&N and All Romance. You should really acquaint yourself with those boys. You absolutely have my permission to do so.

You want to familiarize yourself with some things because from here on in, it’s full speed ahead and you might find yourself lost, wondering who certain people are.

Jus’ saying.

So like I always do when reaching the end, I take a few days off to regroup and let the story marinate then I start the fixing process. That starts now, so I’ll be back to the second round on Monday. I’ll be spending my weekend reading and sleeping.

Helluva high life I lead. LOL

I don’t have a release date and I won’t have one until after I fix what needs fixing then let my betas, proofers and everyone and their mama have a go at the book. I can’t predict how long that will take so it makes no sense trying to give you a date. Soon as I know something, so will you.

Don’t hesitate to hit me up wherever, if you have questions or comments. I welcome that. And I’m off to find something good to read.