Kate Genet's Blog, page 4

We must be crazy – Violet sneak-peek!

We’ve obviously lost our minds here – because this is a behind-the-curtains look at the first chapter of VIOLET – so freshly written that the virtual ink isn’t even dry. That’s right – first draft stuff, written just yesterday. It will probably change a little before publication, but we love it all the same!

Pull up a pew, folks, and let’s see what’s going on.

VIOLET – CHAPTER ONE

The room swam in a prism of light. Even the shadows glowed, floating on the periphery, a harmony of gentle illumination.

Sudden arms linked around my neck and squeezed. ‘You’re standing there with your mouth agape.’

I tugged on the arms to loosen them and grinned. ‘Since when do you know words like agape?’

Bronny let go and went spinning out under the light, her hair swinging out from her shoulders like spun-gold floss. She spread her hands wide, gesturing at the room. ‘I’m getting married in a bookshop,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d better work on literising my vocabulary.’

‘There’s no such word as literising,’ I pointed out, but my grin was even wider. Sticking my own hands in my pockets, I gazed once more around the room and sighed. ‘It looks good though, doesn’t it?’

She twinkled a wave at the fairy lights suspended in a glistening web from the ceiling, at more lights entwined with ivy that draped the ends of the heavy bookshelves, then twirled again to take in the sight of the long table set for the morrow’s dinner, with an intake of breath that was half way between a sigh and a gasp.

‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘More than perfect, actually, though I don’t know what word that would be.’ She flashed me a radiant smile. ‘Is there a word that means more perfect than perfect?’

I stepped over to her and laid a gentle kiss on her flushed cheek. ‘You,’ I said. ‘You are, at this moment, the epitome of more perfect than perfect.’

She giggled at that and danced away again under the lights, reached out to touch a reverent finger to the bowls on the table, ready and waiting for the flowers they would cup in their crystal depths for the wedding dinner. Reflecting the lights above them, they were already exquisite, even without the perfection of roses.

Looking up, Bronny caught me gazing at her, and narrowed her eyes at me. ‘You,’ she said, pointing a pink nail in my direction.

‘Me?’ I pretended innocence, thinking I had an idea what was coming next.

‘This should be for you, you know that, don’t you?’

It was a conversation we’d had before. Bronny was convinced I should be the one getting married in the bookshop. Which, I supposed did hold a certain logic, considering it was my own bookshop, and I was, and always had been, completely mad about books. I sniffed, gave her my most disarming shrug.

‘I am yet to receive the appropriate proposal.’

She rolled her eyes and came back over, flung a casual arm about my shoulder again, and tucked me closer to her side, content for a moment to be silent. I risked a glance up at her. Bronny was tall, one of those willowy creatures who belonged in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Whereas I was best, I thought, described as a Picasso, during his cubism phase.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed at last, and I relaxed against her, glad not to hear another rendition of grief over my lack of a partner. I was content enough to be single, and besides – I had the bookshop. ‘It truly is beautiful.’

And it was. The lights on the ceiling would turn the dinner into something magical the next evening. It was winter, the wedding service was set for three-thirty, and the reception was simply to be a dinner, here in the bookshop as the natural light faded from the day, the group seated at one long table that reminded me of the dining hall in Hogwarts. I glanced up at the ceiling again and smiled. Definitely Hogwarts on a starry starry night.

‘I could never have afforded something this marvellous without your help,’ Bronny whispered, bending to speak confidentially in my ear.

‘We’ve been best friends since we were at kindergarten together,’ I reminded her. ‘You know I’d do anything for you.’

She sighed, and I could hear the happiness in the sound. It came from deep within her chest, most likely from that red, beating organ in charge of making us fall in love. ‘And Louie,’ she said. ‘Promise me you like Louie.’

‘I love Louie,’ I said, and I was only a slight exaggeration. I’d always thought it would be impossible for anyone to be good enough for Bronny, but Louie, she made the grade, I had to admit that.

‘And we’re still going to hang out together all the time,’ Bronny said, making me find her hand and pat it.

‘Sweetheart,’ I said. ‘You really don’t have to worry about me.’

But looking up at her I saw her forehead crease anyway. ‘I do worry about you, Fran. I can’t help it. You’re the most wonderful friend in the world, and I want you to have the sort of happiness I’ve found with Louie.’

This time I didn’t just pat the hand, I gave it a good squeeze, pinching my eyes closed for a moment too, so they wouldn’t leak the way they were suddenly threatening to.

‘You’re the best, Bronny,’ I said. ‘Why, if it wouldn’t be like marrying my sister, I’d be the one saying my vows to you tomorrow.’

That made her giggle again, a sound that always made me think of pulled Taffy or some other sort of confectionary. It was sugary and sweet and I adored hearing it.

‘Listen,’ I said, and I was patting her hand again. ‘There’s someone out there for me, I just have to be patient.’

‘You really believe that?’ She blinked at me. ‘I mean, I do – but you have to too. You haven’t given up, have you?’

My turn to laugh. ‘I’m only twenty nine, Bronny – not quite over the hill yet.’ Letting go of her, I spread out my arms at the bookshop. ‘Besides, I have this.’ The shop was where my heart had been happy to belong since the day the real estate agent had pressed the key to the old Georgian house into my sweating palm. I’d curled my fingers around it, feeling its slight weight like it had been forged from gold. To me, it was, even still. The bookshop was a dream I’d had since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, as my old gran had put it, when she signed the mortgage papers that allowed me to buy the place.

Haven, I’d called it, and a haven it still was, for books, for the best tea, coffee, and muffins in Bath – if I did say so myself – and for all the gays, lesbians, queers, and other letters of the alphabet who came from all over the southwest to browse, mingle, argue, and find love over the printed page.

I nudged Bronny. ‘You and Louie met here,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s only right that you get married here.’

‘You still can too,’ my best friend said. ‘When it’s time.’

I nodded. ‘Yep. Especially now I know how wonderful it looks all gussied up like something out of the fairy tale section.

Bronny tugged her phone out of her pocket and took a quick look at the time. ‘Gotta get going,’ she said, giving me a big smacking kiss on the cheek.

‘Gotta get your beauty sleep,’ I agreed. ‘Big day tomorrow.’

She was picking up her coat and shimmying into it. ‘That’s right. Which brings me to the topic you have been studiously avoiding all night.’

I looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She patted a woolly hat onto her head. It was December outside, a few days before Christmas and the chill of the season was determined to latch on to any unwisely exposed piece of flesh.

‘You better know what I’m talking about, Fran,’ she said, waggling her finger at me. ‘Louie and I are counting on you.’

There was no helping it – I grinned at her and laughed. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head,’ I told her. ‘Everything is under control.’

‘Speech?’

‘Written, practised with a great deal of embarrassment in front of the bathroom mirror every morning for the last two weeks.’ I wasn’t exaggerating.

‘Good,’ she said, then winced. ‘You really are okay with doing all this? I’ve asked such a lot of you.’

‘I’m thrilled about it all, believe me.’ It was true. She was my best friend. We’d seen everything through together, and I wanted nothing more than to give her the wedding day she deserved. Even if that meant giving my own speech and supervising those from her father and brothers, who were apt to be ever so slightly loose and fast with their mouths.

‘It’s all going to be fine,’ I assured her. ‘Now go on and get out of here.’

With a radiant smile she blew me a kiss and was out the door a moment later. I watched her disappear like a ghost into the night, then turned to look at our handiwork one last time before I switched all the lights off and headed upstairs to my flat, already looking forward to pouring a glass of Sapporo beer, which was a Japanese brew, but I figured it would go just fine with yesterday’s red Thai curry.

‘Damn.’ One of the intricate festoons of lights had come off its hook. ‘How did you manage that?’ I asked, interrogating the inanimate object. For a moment, I considered leaving it until the morning, but standing there wrinkling my nose, I knew that possibly wasn’t the best idea. A vision swam into my head of coming downstairs in the morning to find that overnight the whole get-up of fairy lights and artificial ivy had come crashing down onto the table.

It would only take a minute to fasten the lights back into place, and make sure they would hold. I’d been about to take the ladder back downstairs to the basement anyway.

Bronny had done most of the trips up and down the ladder. A lithesome form had its advantages. She’d been like a gazelle, up and down the rungs and I smiled as I got the ladder into place. I wasn’t nearly so nimble, and she wasn’t there to hold the ladder steady, but it would only take a moment, and boy I did not want to come down in the morning, rubbing sleep from my eyes, to find the whole mess of lights on the table amid splinters of crystal bowls and fine glass champagne flutes.

The last secure step mocked me, short by a good few inches. I’d gotten used to being short and rather square, but right now I would almost have sold my soul to be a good six inches taller and slim and flexible with it.

I might not have been well-endowed with classically beautiful features, but I was well up there on smarts, and all the brain cells in my head were screaming at me to stay off the very top step. They even graced me with a full-colour image of me standing there, nothing to hold on to, wavering first to the left, then to the right, then pinwheeling in an ungainly freefall that would undeniably hurt when I came in for landing. Likely on the table right in the midst of those crystal bowls and fine glass champagne flutes.

So why then I heaved myself up into mid-air, I have no explanation. I simply did it.

For a long, drawn-out moment, I thought it was going to be all right. I even got so far as to reach up to the ceiling, snaffling the offending loop of lights and slipping it back in its hook. I had time to smile – triumphantly – and begin the first mental words of congratulations, and then everything wavered in front of me. The long room, heavy bookshelves making corridors pointing towards the wedding table, wobbled in alarm, and the table itself, almost directly under me, seemed to rise up to meet me in a wonder of slow-motion animation.

But it was the ladder wobbling under me, it was me swaying first one way then the other, arms flinging outwards, fingers grappling at slippery handfuls of thin air, and it wasn’t the table coming to meet me, but the other way around. In a feat of gymnastic witchery, I twisted, aiming for an ungainly, sprawling landing on the floor, and I made it too. I know I did.

The thing was however, that I also hit my head on the way to the floor. You’d think you wouldn’t hear the resounding crack of your own skull upon the blade edge of a two hundred year old oak refectory table, but you’d be wrong.

You hear it all right. Just before the world goes black.

 

Alice & Jean is available!

Alice & Jean – historical romance – is available! from Sapphica Books on Vimeo.

New Website!

It’s been a long time since I blogged here, and that’s not only because I’ve been busy, but because I’ve been working on some big changes, and I wanted to be sure of them before making any sort of announcement.

 I started this year thinking, not for the first time, about the sort of stories I most want to write – and whether I’m writing just for the fun and satisfaction of it, or whether Ialso hope, like most writers, to be able to make it financially worth my while.

 We’re all aware that lesbian fiction is a niche genre, and that within that genre there are even more niches to write in – whether romance, mystery, and so on. Lesbian romance can sell very well within our genre, but my preferred genre to write in – horror – does not. Absolutely, it does not. Nor, really, would I expect it too, considering the lesbian reading community is so small.

 Unfortunately, this fact leaves me in a difficult position. If I want to make significant money writing lesbian fiction, I must write romance (and the terrific sales of my romance novel Don’t Go There only served to prove this). If I want any hope of making significant money writing horror fiction, I must go mainstream.

I want to continue to write what I love best – my horror/supernatural suspense books. And I don’t want to have to subsidise them by writing romance. I do have a couple more romantic stories I’d like to write sometime, but I don’t want to have to consider them my bread and butter. I’d prefer they remained strictly optional.

 So, what does this all mean? Along with setting up a brand new website and blog, I’m also two thirds of the way through an ‘alien invasion’ horror story. While it has a lesbian character, she’s only one of several main characters, and while the story is enriched by her sexuality, it is not bound up in it. It is a book intended for a mainstream audience – though I would like to hope that there are several of you readers who would pick it up anyway, because you simply like my writing.

 I will also be putting out regular, free short stories on my new site, the first of which will hopefully go live tomorrow. I have a mailing list you might like to join, to hear about new releases and special deals, and you can sign up over at the new website.

 It’s been an incredibly busy year so far, and I haven’t done half of what I hoped so far. My website Sapphica Books, for indie published lesbian literature is up and running, and if you have books there I haven’t listed yet, and you’d like to have the extra publicity and availability that Sapphica Books brings, then don’t hesitate to contact me. I’m building the list all the time, and have some great things planned for later in the year.

 I’m also still writing blurbs on a professional level, so if your blurb’s a bit sad and needs tarting up, pop on over to The Blurbist, and find out about all that good stuff.

 I do hope to see you all over at my new site, where you can find free stories and keep up to date with new and forthcoming work. I will still be writing lesbian fiction – for those of you who only read that – but it will be only occasional. Having said that though, I can pretty much guarantee that my mainstream stories will also feature lesbian and gay characters, alongside the straight ones.

 Thanks for reading – and oh, by the way, author T.T. Thomas tagged me for The Writing Process Blog Tour, so head on over to kategenet.com and have a read of that, and a look around. Cheers!

Filed under: Writing Journal

Divination – blurb for upcoming novel

One of the joys of having one’s beloved also a writer, is of course, being able to talk about writing. And the fact that you have a built-in reader/editor. But mostly being able always to talk about writing and knowing your darling’s eyes won’t glaze over.

 Having said that, however, Jae and I are almost completely different in what we’re like when we’re writing. She sits there typing away, only to stop, laugh out loud for a few minutes, then read to me what she’s written. I love the way she does that. By the time she’s finished her book, I know almost as much about it as if I’d written it. I’ve listened to her talking about it, wondering about it, figuring it out, and sharing it. Lucky me.

 I, however, am one of those writers who plays everything close to her chest. Jae rarely gets to read or hear anything of one of my books until it is finished and passed to her with a sigh of relief. Poor woman, she’s lucky if she knows a damned thing about my book until she’s reading the finished product.

 This time around, it’s been worse than usual. I confess, I’ve been hamming it up a bit, ‘today I wrote a scene in which my characters talked on the phone,’ I say, and it’s perfectly true, if not the least enlightening. I think I’ve been driving my poor darling a bit crazy.

 In my own defense though, I always find it depressing trying to explain what my book is about. It never sounds any good when I’m fumbling around trying to sum up three hundred pages in a brief soundbite. Well, it’s about two women who meet, and fall in love, and, um, generally they’re getting on pretty well so far…

 About at the end of her tether, Jae insisted last night that if I can’t tell her what it’s about, then I should write the blurb, because she’s sick of me being just a big tease. So, because it’s poor form really, to tease if you’re not going to put out – here’s a quick draft for the blurb for my new book

Divination.

Are we really in charge of our lives? Can we ever really feel in control? Lake Colemann thinks she’s in control of hers. Everything is going pretty swimmingly. She has a good job – hell, she owns her own construction  business, and now she has her own little house, right by the beach she loves so much. A dog and a cat, friends she enjoys; yeah, life is good, all under control and all good. Only thing missing is a steady  girlfriend. A nice, uncomplicated woman to make everything perfect.

 Which is where Carla Seabold is supposed to fit in. The attraction between them is instant and undeniable, but uncomplicated Carla is not. Intriguing though – definitely intriguing. Lake falls hard and fast, unable to help herself, not even wanting to. It’s like destiny has brought them together.

 In fact, that’s exactly what Lake starts to believe – that fate has dipped her meddling finger in their lives. Carla’s a psychic and as Lake gets to know her better, it certainly looks like all the signs are pointing to them being together for a reason. But as they end up chasing down a mysteriously missing day in Carla’s past, Lake starts to wonder if the reason is a good one, or is there just no such thing as uncomplicated love?

Filed under: Writing Journal

Writing from the dark.

Yes, I’ve been taking something of a break, the last week or two. A break from writing, that is, though I’m pretty sure I now need a break from painting the kitchen. And the living room. And hallway and bathroom. With that in mind, I’m now back to the writing.

I’ve actually discovered that I tend to get a little irritable these days when I’ve not done any writing for a while (you can confirm that with my wife). Or maybe that was just the paint fumes. Whichever, it was a good feeling to sit back down at the computer today, open up a blank word document and type in those magical words – chapter one. But starting a new book always makes me nervous, as well as excited. That blank page can be damned intimidating, and knowing that there’s more than one blank page to fill – in fact, you’re looking at putting down around 70 000 words in an order that no one before you has ever come up with – well, it’s enough to put hairs on your chest. It’s a strange job you have when you’re excited about doing something that quite frankly scares the crap out of you.

Of course, that trepidation is never enough to dissuade me. The excitement (and sheer bloody-minded determination) always wins out. With the use of a few tried and tested coping methods. Which, for me, basically consist of not thinking about it. Don’t think about those 70 000 words. You only have to write one to start with, then another after that. Do enough of that, and you’re not even counting anymore, the story has you in its grip and after that, well, it’s a walk in the park.

Thinking about not thinking about things I do more not thinking  (yeah, I just wanted to write that, because it tickles my funny bone) about my books than ever before. It used to be that when I sat down to write, I had quite a few ideas in mind about what I was doing and what I wanted to achieve. I’d thought about the characters, I’d thought about the premise, I’d thought about the tone, and the voice I wanted to use. Not in any great detail, certainly not to the point of being compelled to write outlines and character diaries, but enough to feel fairly sure of what I would be doing when I started typing. But this has changed. Now I shy away from thinking about the book at all. Except for strictly technical matters such as point of view, I pluck a likely idea out of my head, which usually consists of a static image of a place and a character, or two if I’m lucky, and a what-if question. Sometimes it’s not even a question, but just a word that passes for a theme. Once I’m sufficiently intrigued I discover myself leaving it alone, not thinking about it, in fact, refusing to think about it.

I sat down today to start my new book. I had the idea for it perhaps a week ago. The snapshot looks like this  – there’s a woman, she’s been jogging, by the look of it, and she’s standing in a garden in which someone has placed a spiral of smooth white stones. And the word/ theme for the book is ‘passion’. That’s it. The whole enchilada. Not even any sauce on that baby.

I sat down, planning to write a whole novel founded on those two things. Have I gone totally nuts? Shouldn’t I need just a little more information than that? Shouldn’t I want to know more than that? Apparently not. Every time I found myself sidling up to the idea in my mind, wanting to have a better look at it, I shoved it away, back into the dark recesses of the old brain and told myself to leave it alone.

I always knew I tended to write into the dark, not planning where I was going, but now it seems I write from the dark too, not even planning where I’m starting.

Does this extreme form of seat-of-the-pants writing even work? Yes, it actually does. I wrote the fourth Reality Dawn book with little thought, and my last novel Don’t Go There, with basically no conscious thought at all, and today I wrote three thousand words of this new novel and met both my main characters, learnt that one woman is a carpenter and the other’s a psychic and everything is off to a promising start. I’m looking forward to writing more tomorrow, so I can find out more about these two, and what’s going to happen. Because I really haven’t a clue. Not consciously anyway. Deep down I know there’s a story brewing, and I can’t wait for it to come percolating to the surface.

By the way? This wasn’t the blog post I set out to write, either. It was supposed to be one about how my three lesbian historical erotica stories are now available for purchase. Set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they’re short but sensual tales of around 5000 words, because I know, dear reader, that after almost a whole year of being so very nice, you’re in need of something a little bit naughty.

Enticing Ava

Early summer, 1914 and the shadow of war is hanging over the country. All the more reason to grab what pleasure comes your way – at least, that’s the way Tilda feels. Of course, she felt that way even before Britain seemed sure to go to war. She’d be the first to admit she has trouble passing by a pretty woman – especially one determined to catch her eye – and Ava is provocative indeed. There’s only one thing to be done when a beautiful woman is determined she needs some attention, and Tilda knows exactly how to give Ava what she wants.

Excerpt:

For a moment, Tilda thought the woman might not have understood her English, but, the tip of that pink tongue making another appearance, Ava reached down one delightful hand and caught the hem of her dress. She moved slowly, eyes locked on Tilda’s and the tingle in Tilda’s palms spread in a warm flush to the rest of her body. She became aware of her own breathing, her own chest heaving as the white wisp of fabric inched its way up to reveal bare and shapely legs, the curve of a thigh and then further, a hint of rounded hip. The hand fell away and the fabric puddled in the glorious dip between Ava’s legs. 

Midsummer Night`s Tryst

A friend. It was all she wanted. A special friend. One person in all the world to walk and talk with, share confidences, someone who would look at her tenderly, reach fleetingly for her hand, a slight grazing of fingers against the pulse point in the wrist, the sudden upwelling of breast.

 

 In the heart of shy governess Edith burns a secret desire. Longing for one special friend, a woman who will look at her and see someone worth loving, Edith prowls the gardens and woods in the evenings and spends her nights tossing and turning upon her narrow bed, tormented by needs that can never be spoken of, and never hoped to be fulfilled.  Until a chance encounter one fine, summer evening brings with the dusk a magic better than she’d ever dreamed of.

Excerpt:

‘No, no, don’t fix it. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.’ There was a smile in the voice from that pale face with its intense, dark eyes. Edith dropped her fingers from her hair, and bit down on an instinct to touch that white cheek. Her hand fluttered in the dim light and before she could drop it back to her lap, the other woman’s hand flashed out and caught it. Long pale fingers caressed it, turning her palm in their smooth grip and lifting it to the nymph’s face.

A kiss was dropped upon her palm. 

Maid For Each Other

The new parlor maid is something very special. Just what a lonely kitchen maid has been waiting for. Sharing a room, the two young women soon discover far more they want to share with each other than just confidences. Uninhibited and lusty, their new-found friendship turns into much more than either expect, and it might just be far too good to last.

Excerpt:

I grinned right back, all my exhaustion vanishing like dust under a cloth. I didn’t even bother to tidy my kitchen maid’s uniform away as I shucked layer after layer. Just dropped them on the floor. Weren’t even thinking about them, to be honest. I never took my eyes off Minnie’s face. She was watching me, her red lips spreading in a smile, and her eyes wandering all over my body. I never thought my body were such a wonder, but Minnie, she told me it were a positive garden of delights. That was her all over, pretty turns of phrase and a wicked turn of humour. 

Click on the title links to buy.

 

 

Filed under: Writing Journal

It’s Out! (And I’m Proud)

I’m exhausted. After uploading the file for Don’t Go There, I noticed – finally – that the title on the cover had no apostrophe where it needed one. Needless to say, I pulled that one down, and redid the cover without the grammatical error. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it! That cover’s been all around the place for the last week, and no one else mentioned the error either. I guess we really do see what we think ought to be there. Which certainly is the case with typos. I found a few more of those while I was glancing through the book file, and fixed them while I was at it. With a bit of luck, I’ve got them all now, or most of them, I hope. I’m never surprised when I see a few typos in a book, because they’re damned hard to get rid of. Having said that, however, I’ve been as thorough as possible with this book, so I hope it’s as clean a read as possible now.

Because – yes, it’s available for download right now. If I weren’t so tired (I’ve also been working on the cover for the upcoming print version) I’d be doing a big ole happy dance. I love all the stories I’ve published, but it’s always a big thrill for me when I put out a full length novel. This one’s not an especially long read – I think my Kindle told me it was a four hour job, but it’s at least twice the length of the Reality Dawn books.

Whatever – I’m a happy camper, and I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I did writing it. I already have my next book planned, and I’m looking forward to starting it now that the hustle and bustle of publication is almost behind me. But in the meantime – go and download ‘Don’t Go There’ because you know you really do want to go there…

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Go-There-Kate-Genet-ebook/dp/B00H29VFCY

 

Filed under: Writing Journal

Don’t Go There (Actually – Please Do)

It’s done. I wrote it last month, after asking quite a few of you to educate me about romance writing. I’m not quite sure how well I followed the conventions (though I did get the ones you considered most important in there), I ended up just going with instinct, and telling a story about two women and their bourgeoning relationship. And thus its best fit for categorisation is as a romantic novel. I’m a bit nervous about it, to tell the truth – I’ve written many stories with romantic storylines, but this is the first where the romantic relationship is the raison d’être for the action within the story.

 And you know what? I loved writing it. I found it a lot more fulfilling than I expected to, and it’s made me want to write more of this type of story. I guess I’m getting sentimental in my old age. Though I don’t think sentimentality has any place in a story – but sentiment, yes, for sure.

 Anyway, enough of my waffling, let’s get to the heart of the matter, shall we? It’s called Don’t Go There, and you’ll be able to download a digital edition on 4th December. I’m putting this one out in print as well, for those of you who prefer that format, but that may take up to a week longer. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you when it’s out.

So, here’s the blurb, and I do hope it piques your interest, because I really look forward to hearing what you think about this new direction of mine.

Don`t Go There

Teresa probably wouldn’t admit she’s in hiding from her own life; she simply feels that being back in her tiny home town will keep her out of trouble. Spending her days painting, she’s turned her back on more than her past, she’s let go of all her hopes and dreams for the future and while this new life is a struggle, she’s determined not to let anyone tempt her into changing course.

 But Scarcity wants to know her – Teresa’s the only other lesbian in this tiny dot on the map after all, and Scarcity’s position in life feels increasingly precarious. She’s coming of age and coming out into a world that seems more hostile than welcoming. Things at home aren’t all they could be and the more experienced Teresa might be able to offer her a helping hand, and a safe place  in which Scarcity can truly be herself.

 Teresa’s frightened of her though. The girl stirs up too many feelings in her, and she doesn’t want to be reminded of needs that are going unfulfilled. It would be much easier if Scarcity would just leave her alone – on her own, Teresa can’t repeat her worst mistakes. Unfortunately, what she’s doing can barely be called living, and when Scarcity insists on being part of her life, Teresa may have to re-evaluate everything she thinks she knows about herself and the choices she’s made .

 Available 4th December, but I`ll be back with links on the day.

Filed under: Writing Journal

Painted Earth – Reality Dawn Book 4

It’s out – finally! I’m sure you’ve waited long enough for it, (sorry about that), so off you go and get your latest fix.

Reality Dawn is convinced there’s an inter-dimensional passageway open in a house belonging to an artist. Worse, the artist knows, and is going back and forth through it, and certainly won’t want Reality barging in there to close it permanently. Rae finds herself working for this artist, and sneaking Reality Dawn into the house to do the job on the sly. 

That would be fine, just another adventure, except Reality’s refusing to let Rae come through the Doorway with her. In fact, something is going on with Reality Dawn that she’s refusing to talk about, and Rae is too afraid to ask what’s on her mind.

Plagued with her own growing feelings for Reality Dawn, and tormented by what happened between them on the last Earth they visited, Rae’s terrified of being sent away permanently. Reality’s acting like she doesn’t want her around anymore, but how are you supposed to go back to working in a supermarket after trekking around the multiverse with someone as fascinating and compelling as Reality Dawn? Rae doesn’t want to know, because when it comes down to it, she’ll risk anything for Reality.

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Filed under: Writing Journal

Novel Finished – Free Short Story

How am I getting along with my current work – the novel I started at the beginning of November?

It’s finished.

It’s not especially long, coming in around 65 000 words, but apparently that’s as long as the story needed to be because I can’t think of anything more than needs to be added to it.  It’s been strange writing this one, as it’s such a departure for me. There is no supernatural stuff, no marvellous adventure, nothing much out of the ordinary at all. There are just a couple of women trying to get along as best they can, with themselves and with each other. I’ve been looking forward to finishing it just so I can read it over and see exactly what species of book I’ve written. I suspect it’s mostly a romance novel, but that just doesn’t sound right. Me, write a romance? Never. I know there’s usually a romantic storyline somewhere in my work, but to make that a focus? How odd. I’ve second-guessed myself while writing this one more than I can remember ever doing before, and that hasn’t been fun. I’ve kept going with it though, trusting that it will turn out fairly decent just because I do know how to tell a story. That’s what I’ve been telling myself anyway, and I know you’re probably all laughing at me while reading this.

 Funnily enough, this novel is one I started years ago – nine or ten years ago, during that year’s nanowrimo, and I was adapting it from my short story Scarcity. Inspired by a conversation I had just a few weeks ago with a couple other writers, I dragged out the short story and read it over, remembering the novel I had always planned to turn it into. The original sixty or so pages I wrote all that time ago are long gone, and probably just as well. I’ve read other work from back then and it makes me cringe. I like the short story a lot though, and before I knew quite what I was doing, I took the first couple scenes from it and started writing. Just over three weeks later, it’s a novel. Totally unplanned, but very welcome.

 To celebrate this , I’m offering the original short story to you for free for a short time. Many of you will probably have read it, but if not, here’s your chance. And in a week or two, you can try the novel version.  I’m looking forward to seeing what you all think about that one.

 So, here’s the Smashwords link to download Scarcity for free. While you’re doing that, I’ll try to think of a title for the novel.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/38053

Filed under: Writing Journal

Categorization of Novels

I haven’t blogged as much as I’d planned to this month, but then there isn’t all that much to say when you’re writing a book. Every day, or as often as possible, you sit down and put more words on the page. For me, at least, most of the cogitating over plot and so on seems to go on in some mysterious nether world where I am oblivious to it. The story manufactures itself as I write, one thing flowing logically into the next as the pages mount up.

 But it is tiring work, and even at my fairly slow and steady rate of 20 000 words a week, I’ve not had much time or energy left over to get a lot of other things done. Like blogging.

 I have found, however, that consistent productivity has side effects- a sort of heightened inspiration. Lying in bed the other night, waiting for sleep to visit, I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness in surprise. There, right within reach, rattling around in my head, was the answer I needed as to why my novel Eidolon had stalled. Even better, along with that knowledge, was a plan of how to fix it. If I were to do this, change that, set it here instead of there, try out these characters and remove those – why I think the story would work perfectly.  I lay there, excited, turning over the story in my mind, investigating these new possibilities, and decided that yes indeed, I think it could work and I also think it could be a story I would enjoy writing very much.

 So I’m hoping to go back to that book shortly. I’ll throw out the 9000 words I have on it and start completely over. Sometimes that’s the only thing that works.

 The solution I found interests me greatly though, on an intellectual, thinking-about-writing level, and it reminded me of an interview in the Paris Review with Stephen King that I read a while ago. In this interview he categorises his novels into two groups, calling one ‘innies’ and the other ‘outies’. His innie stories tend to be about one character and go deeper and deeper into that character. In an outie, there are many characters. It’s a wonderfully simple classification.

 I’ve always preferred to write stories that are innies; they’re the ones that come naturally to me. Orange Moon is an innie, focusing on only one character, and indeed for the first half of the book there’s really only one character in the story. Remnant is even more noticeably an innie – Cass is the only apparent survivor in some sort of apocalyptic scenario, although many readers have said they were delighted to find that Izzy the horse qualified as another character in her own right too. I’m comfortable writing these innie books. I like to dig deep into a character’s psyche, seeing how she copes with the intrusion of the extraordinary into her otherwise ordinary life.

 I wanted to write Eidolon as an outie – a story with multiple characters and viewpoints, and  a setting that encompassed a large area. But I also needed the characters to interact in some way with each other, and my original idea had them spread too widely, and too much happening in too many different places for me to comfortably bring together.

  What I’ve ended up doing now, is pruning everything down to a more manageable size. It’s still, to my mind, going to be an outie, but I’ve reassessed the setting, and made the action specific to one area, one small town. And in that one area are all my characters, aligned to each other by geography, relationships, and the coming action of the book. Almost like a captive pool of characters, and they aren’t going to know what’s hit them. By focusing the book like this, it’s achieved a clearer picture in my mind, no longer alarmingly fuzzy around the edges. If I write it this way, I’m pretty sure it’s going to work. Even though it means throwing out the 9000 words I have on the story already and starting completely over.

 I’m looking forward to starting. And I sure as hell hope it comes together the way that I think it will, because I’ve been talking about it way too much to have to come back here and say – yet again – that I have to quit on it.

 P.S. I reached 60 000 words on my November novel yesterday and expect to finish it in the coming week. But more on that soon…

Filed under: Writing Journal