S.M. Johnson's Blog, page 14

SM Johnson ~Thursday Morning Coffee ~ Tatts and Stripes and Snow, Oh my!

Happy Thursday, darlings!

I wrote about my tattoos and posted pics over at tumblr, so feel free to check that out. (Ignore the couple of typos... I have no idea how to edit anything over there). I'm sure I've done it already over here, but maybe the story is a little more evolved this time around. Or maybe not.

Northern MN/WI is absolute INSANITY as apparently we are being subjected to the NeverEnding FuckingWinter of 2013 (TM).  I have put my boots away at least three times now, and at least three times I've had to dig them out from the back of the closet. (I have a huge and unholy terror of being forced to endure wet socks). We've been getting significant amounts of snow every week. When I say "significant" I mean enough to break out the city snow-plows - this is not right for April.

I have been noticing for about the last four years that we don't get really warm weather until nearly the end of June, and then continue to have unseasonably warm temperatures right into November. As a kid, good weather started in April and was over by mid-September. I remember wearing Halloween costumes over parkas and snowsuits, and the adults carried steaming mugs of hot cocoa. The last couple of years my kid wore their costumes over nakedness, and we moms wore sweatshirts and carried iced vodka drinks (because trick-or-treating is more fun when alcohol is involved. Trust).


That's about all I've got for Coffee today.

Oh - well. Have I mentioned that I have the best hairdresser girl EVER? I love my stripes (she hates when I call them "stripes" - LOL). And although I pretty much hate pictures of myself, my stripes are so awesome that I almost made myself late for work trying to take a picture that I don't hate. Or at least that I don't hate as much as I hate most of them.

I guess this one will do. Love, love, love the contrast of highlights and low-lights. So worth the money.

Happy Thursday, darlings. Hope your weekend is snow-less. Sounds like mine won't be.

SM Johnson ~Thursday Morning Coffee ~ I have no idea

... what I'm going to write about today. My blissful string of many days off in a row is coming to an end. Today is the last one. It has been exceptionally lovely, and I;m hoping for a repeat... repeatedly.

I have written 16,600 words of a new and very dark book. I knew all this dark reading was going to take me somewhere deliciously unpleasant. It has also brought some astonishing pleasures to me, and more laugh-out-loud correspondence than I've had in awhile.

Life is certainly a journey.

Anyway. If I follow that thought train, it's going to go deep. So how some dark instead?




  Jeremiah Quick


I have never hated myself.
If I held the straight-edge to my flesh and pressed it until it drew blood, if I dragged bladed red patterns into my skin to carve a memory, it was always, always for love.
Never punishment, never mutilation, and certainly never self-loathing. Only this pretty-sad-bitter failure to have loved hard enough.
The pain. Oh. This I cannot describe, not really. The pain of the blade nothing compared to the pain of my regret.
And I regret so many things about my time with Jeremiah, from Before and Later and Now. You shall see.


Now
I was wrestling three unruly plastic grocery bags as I came out of the store, one of which had slipped past my hand and strangled my wrist. About to start cussing out loud for real, a phrase floated out of the semi-darkness from twenty years back. A simple phrase that jerked my head to attention.
"Candy bar."
That was all.
Yesterday, dragging two unruly pre-adolescent boys and one angry teenage girl in and out of the same store, I might have not have heard. But five minutes ago, in the store alone for once, I'd stared at a Hershey candy display, picturing the neat little rows of rectangles that are exposed when an old-school Hershey bar is unwrapped.
He was leaning against the brick corner of the building, long dirty-blond hair almost obscuring his face, looking more ninety-eighty-nine Axl Rose than Axl looks these days. Just to give you an idea.
My breath caught, and crunched plastic handles slipped from my hands, all but the one tangled around my wrist.
I couldn't tell if he was smiling.
There are memories you share with only one other person in all the world.
My husband of all these many years knows a million things about me that no one else knows. If you asked him to spill my secrets, he'd come up with a few. Like how I text pictures of myself to his phone when I masturbate in the middle of the day, or how, if I'm reading a really good book, he can call my name three times with increasing volume, but I've been so transported away from my body that I don't even hear. He'd probably also mention that I can suck a golf ball through a garden hose, although no one needs to know that, and it's not true anyway.
Somewhere buried deep in his subconscious, he probably knows the candy bar story, too, but has filed it in that space of brain we all have for 'things not very important.'
When, indeed, it is one of the most important things of all.
"Jeremiah," I said to the tall, slim figure leaning against the building. For a second I couldn't say anything more. I'd looked for him, over the years, time and time again, and finally gave it up, deciding he must be dead.
He laughed. " Nice poem. My remembrance."
A surge of heat flashed through me, under my skin, over my skin, until my very fingertips broke a sweat. The last plastic-handled bag slid from my arm and hit the ground with a crinkled thump. It was a relief to let the burden fall.
He sauntered over and picked the bags up. "It's quick, now."
I shook my head, familiar with his way of leaving me in the dark. He'd always done it on purpose, I was sure, and was doing it now. "What is?"
And there was that old smile, the one that was almost a grimace, as if he'd had to teach himself in front of a mirror how to smile like a normal person. It didn't reach his eyes. But then, it never had. They'd always been aching pools of sadness. Well. When they weren't empty, that is.
"My name. Now. Quick."
The laugh came out of me, an embarrassing bark, but I couldn't help it. I'd always laughed easily. It was why he'd liked having me around, even while at the same time it was part of the reason he hated me. We couldn't possibly understand each other, but in the end neither of us tried very hard to change that. Even the candy bar never worked to change that. 
The candy bar.
Bait.
Sophomore year of high school – our first together in that building, a compilation of students from too many parts of the city. His friend, the one with no eyebrows, was in a class with my friend, and I can't even remember the hows or whys of the introductions, but it happened within the first few days.And when schedules got smoothed out, there was not one person that I knew who shared the same lunch time as me. Except Jeremiah. Excuse me, now Quick. There are a lot of x's and even a q in that sentence. So odd. Almost as odd as this whole encounter.
I said he looked like Axl Rose, the original Axl, of course, not the fat balding adult Axl turned into. I thought maybe his facial expressions looked like Sid Vicious, of the Sex Pistols, of Sid and Nancy, who, to tell you the truth, I'd never even heard of until Jeremiah. But prettier, of course. So maybe. There was no goth back then, you know, not for us, where we lived. Nearest thing to it was punk underground. It was, as near as I could understand, anarchist, anti-Christian, political, and angry. It wasn't emo, wasn't cool, and Jeremiah got hassled for it something fierce – punched, kicked, rolled into snow banks. Often right in front of the rest of us. Me.
His long, dirty-blond hair was a Mohawk, but I didn't know that until Halloween, when he spent his sleeping hours making it stand up in eighteen inch spikes. I have a picture of that, even, one of the only three photographs I have of him.
There was a photograph of Quick hanging by one corner from a drying string in the art room at the end of the year, an eight by ten black and white, his hair smooth along the sides of his face, his face unsmiling and tenderly naked without glasses. He was gone by then, and I almost stole it… but I supposed it belonged to the artsy girl, and I guess I hoped it was precious to her – she who'd had so much more of him than I ever had. Still.
I should have taken it. Now I picture it dumped in the trash by some clueless janitor, who had no idea and no care what he was throwing away – that he would just toss something that precious. I should known that whoever had snapped the picture would have the negative. I was naïve in too many ways.
I didn't take it. But it remains in my mind, and in full-color, even, so in a way it does belong to me.He wore knee-high steel-toed boots, black, that zipped up the back, clearly twenty years before that became a fashion statement.
Only the misfits wore them.
His leather jacket was the standard motorcycle variety, heavy, purchased from a thrift store, and supple only after years of wear. New, it would have been stiff and uncomfortable, hardly tolerable.
He'd customized it, adding a British flag to the back, secured to the leather with riveted metal  spikes. A hundred or more of the spikes dotted the jacket, covered the shoulders, sleeves, front and back of the thing. If ever something screamed keep your distance, it was that jacket.
I was fascinated. The urge to get close irresistible.
It still was.
"You saw it somewhere? The poem?"
He stood there, holding my grocery bags, then spread his arms, lifting the bags into the air, out to the sides of his waist. Title the scene Expansive Shrug Awkward with Plastic. His voice was flat. "I Google myself now and then, like everyone does."
I ran the words through my head briefly, trying to remember the first stanza, feeling faintly embarrassed that he'd seen something of my inner world. Which, of course, I'd happily flung out to the blogosphere, finally giving up on the possibility that he was still alive.
There's a childhood friendYou'll never forgetHe's the one who affects you the mostHe'll make your heart meltWith the things that he's feltBut the memory's only a ghost.
"I wrote it after you left," I said. "It's awful."
He shrugged with a rustle of plastic, almost looked angry. "Naïve," he said. "Just naïve. And that's not your fault. It's not like you could help your life."
I didn't know what to say. Does one apologize for a lack of childhood trauma? But I didn't have to say anything. He said it.
"It wasn't things, you know. It was… Pain. Poverty. Desperation."
He'd paused between each word, letting me feel just how much anger was nestled behind and between them.
I recoiled, just a fraction.
In a lot of ways, I prefer to be naïve.
"Fuckin' Candy Bar," he said. "I never forgot you. In fact, I'm completely amazed that someone so sheltered could still be alive."
"I thought you weren't. Alive, I mean."
His voice came at me like a weapon, then, vicious and hateful and spitting. "I'm glad it made you sad to think I was dead."
I stiffened, reached for my grocery bags. It was so easy to become the child I had been Before, hopelessly innocent, middle-class born and bred, brainwashed. The only fallback I had, the only way I knew how to cope with his being cruel to me, was first to agree with him, and then acknowledge that we were so, so different. "Yes, I mourned you. Mourned the fact that the silver spikes of your jacket only ever pressed into my body once… and more than that. I never felt like I was done with you because you just fucking disappeared. No goodbye, nothing. Back then – way back then –I attached myself to you and stayed, even when you were mean to me. I desperately wanted to love you, but you wouldn't allow it. So, yeah," I said. "I can see that it would make you glad. Even though you have no capacity to understand why."
Before
I attached myself to him during that lunch period, on the excuse that I didn't know anyone else, but in truth, utterly fascinated because he was so polar opposite of every other person in my whole world. He didn't like it. Sometimes he was mean to me. "Why are you here?" he would ask, and every time he asked it, he looked baffled. My memories of those conversations are like an iPod track stuck on replay – just… very little script deviation.
"Because I don't know anyone else."
"You don't know me, either."
"But I will," I said, ever the optimist, though I understood that his "ha" in response was sarcastic, but choosing to ignore it.
In the mornings before school, and during break time, he stayed as far away from me as he could, and still be behind the red smoking line. Red-liners, they called us, you can smoke so long as you stay behind the painted red line. It was laughable, but much nicer for us back then than the tobacco free schools are now, I bet. And somehow my little group of friends gravitated toward him and Chill, the eye-brow-less friend, until they were enfolded. It was Chill's fault, really –making eyes at one of my friends, and I was making eyes at Jeremiah, and so the group just… kind of drifted around him. He didn't join my small group of friends; my group gravitated toward him until he was enfolded.
And I didn't make friends with Jeremiah so much as I forced him to be my friend, completely against his will. And no, that isn't one hundred per cent possible, so yeah, there was something about me that he couldn’t stay away from, even if he would never admit it.
I started bringing a Hershey bar to lunch. A peace offering. Just one, for the two of us to share. I'd open it and break up the rectangles, doling them out one piece at a time, one for him, one for me. Nothing so simple as halving the damn thing at the outset, no, and I'm not even sure why. We ate the small pieces slowly, letting them melt away in our mouths, maybe because it was easier than talking. Once in a while, I'd break my last neat rectangle in half, offer it to him, and we'd quibble over who should eat the largest of the minuscule piece.
Every day, one Hershey bar.
Until the day I didn't bring one, because I thought the candy bar didn't matter, I thought we were friends without sweet treats. But I was wrong.
The expression on his face was like I'd ruined his birthday.It didn't happen again.
Yes, I was hopelessly sheltered and naïve.
It didn't occur to me that he didn't eat lunch because he couldn't afford lunch.I should have brought him a sandwich.
I did try to buy him lunch, once or twice, but he was insulted, called me a bitch, and stalked off campus, and not return until the next morning.
I was too young to recognize pride.
I didn't eat lunch myself, because I spent my lunch money on cigarettes.

Now
Standing here in the almost-dark, twenty years later, I said, "I should have given you a sandwich. Or nine of them. You were too thin."
He dropped all three grocery sacks at his feet, then raised his arms and held them out from his sides, palms facing the star-sprinkled sky. "What the hell difference does that make now?"
I shook my head, unable to explain just now about regret. About only having regrets about the things we didn't do.
"My old man kicked the shit out of me as many times a week as I managed not to avoid him. You gave me chocolate nearly every day. Believe me, it was appreciated."
"I'm sorry," I said, and it was almost a whisper. "I didn't know."
"I didn't want you to know. I didn't want anyone to know."
[end excerpt]

SM Johnson ~ Catching up with Vampire Diaries ~ caution, whining ahead

Real rainbows. My camera.Damon is beautiful, especially on big screen. Love the little grin. Mmmm. Kind of Lestat, kind of Brian Kinney. What's not to like?Yeah, I get to snuggle into my chair and stare at The Vampire Diaries. Fucking migraine. There are parts of this show that are stupid, like the fact that these clearly adult people keep going to high school. That, and they have about a million different talismans to protect them from vampires, to point to vampires etc, but they don't pay attention to them, even after they almost die. Yes, I give you this talisman in all seriousness, with intense drama eyes (beautiful), and tense lips. So make sure you IGNORE it, because you are ultimately TSTL. Argh, Elena. You are an idiot. But Damon is still eye candy. I think I'm watching season 1, episode 12. I love television so much it's taken me about a year so far.
stolen from tumblr here
I will watch Labyrinth when I get tired of this. Labyrinth has lived in my Netflix instant queue, ever since the VCR died. All my favorite movies are VHS. I need to start replacing them.

This headache fucks with my vision and makes my hands numb. This is pretty hard on the whole concept of spelling. Sigh.

Yeah, I allowed circumstances to trigger this bullshit, but usually it takes a two triggers before there's a problem. Not sleeping. Not eating. Missing my afternoon coffee. Consuming sugar in large quantities. Maybe 12 shots of Apple Pie is a trigger (shrug). But that was like... on Friday. That's a highly delayed consequence.

See original imageThe only naughtiness I engaged in was a consistent lack of sleep, and I took a nap yesterday and went to bed early last night. This is so unfair.

Yeah, Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth is so much evil hotness. I adore his mean little teeth, almost more than his makeup, hair, and tights. Labyrinth had something to do with my twisted first sexual awakening. The moment I knew, for sure, that I was somewhat more depraved than other people.

I was furious with Sarah for saying the magic words, "You have no power over me,"  and escaping the Labyrinth.

"I ask for so little, just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave."

Who says no to that?

"Everything that you wanted, I have done. You asked that the child be taken. I took him. You cowered before me, I was frightening. I have reordered time. I have turned the world upside down, and I have done it all for you. I am exhausted from living up to your expectation of me. Isn't that generous?"

Yeah. Love him.

Life is good, except for this unproductive headache. Perhaps another nap is in order.

Carry on, darlings. Please send your friends to buy books. Sales are... hmm, acceptable, I guess, I've sold more than one book per day this month, so really, no complaints there. And I've got a bunch of words on this darker piece that I'm working on. That's pretty fun.

SM Johnson ~Thursday Morning Coffee ~

Ahhh, good morning, my darlings, although it will likely be closer to noon when you get a chance to read this. I do apologize. I know that the pounding, keening lack-of-caffeine headache is a whore. So feed her with your favorite coffee, so she'll run off and find someone else to proposition.

I show you my favorite Thursday Morning Coffee pic because the sun is out and the snow is melting, and it is exceptionally lovely... and because I adore spring. I was blinking hibernation-fatigued eyes yesterday, adjusting to this new brightness, and tying very hard not to run over with my car very many of the children who were chasing balls and riding bikes. People get very wound up when you run over their children...

I forget, in the winter, that a great many people exist here other than those inside my personal sphere.

I have not much to report in the way of news. Three in the Dungeon has been released on Amazon, and I am pleased about that. It was my fastest book to date - I started the rough draft November 1st, and published the final draft March 24th. I have challenged myself to write more faster this year, and when I get stuck on a project (read: DeVante's Choice) - to allow myself the grace to acknowledge that my writer's brain isn't ready for it yet, and move on to something else. (Rather lovely that my publisher allowed this acknowledgement, really).

If you've read Three in the Dungeon, I do want you to know that I will be publishing a little story about Boy and Hawk in not-too-long awhile. I mean, you do want to know if Dr. Minotti helps them with their little problem, right? And I know you guys - you'd love to be there for all the intimate gritty details, wouldn't you? Heh. Yeah, me too.

And I'll bring you the story of Ian Graff and Piper Matthews soon, as well, possibly even before Saints and Sinners.

As I said, I'm really trying to push myself this year. Probably these shorter works will be found on Amazon for .99, since Amazon won't allow me to give them away for free (they are such bastards that way), but I expect to list them for free on Smashwords... really kind of depends on the length. If you like them, reviews would be much appreciated - as reviews are both the currency and the primary communication between a writer and his/her readers. And of course, tell your friends. My stuff is, and I intend always will be, DRM-free, so you are welcome to use Calibre or some other program to convert the files for other devices. You may also (and always, always) email me for books if you cannot afford to pay for them. If I knew how to donate them to every library in the country, I would joyfully do so. I love libraries.

That being said, I'm going to tell you a story.

When I was a child, the library was a favorite place, and the day I was deemed "old enough" to walk there on my own was a happy day indeed. The freedom to sit right down on the dusty floor between the shelves and browse thrilling and musty books for hours (literally), and to have no adult peering over my shoulder urging me to "hurry up" was my idea of absolute paradise.

I think there was probably a bit of push and pull at home over this, and eventually a watch on my wrist and a deadline... but still. When I said I'd been at the library for four hours, it was utterly true.

I would check out as many books as would fit into my backpack, and as I was always very small for my age, I'd  have to stop and rest a few times while lugging them home. Which was no problem - I'd just pull one of these precious treasures out of my pack, plop myself under a tree... and read.

There are several books and authors I remember as being significant (the following links go to Wikipedia). The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts, everything and everything I could find by Madeleine L'Engle, S.E. Hinton, the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis... umm... Edith Nesbit, whose work I have always adored, and who, I swear, must be the author of that ONE DAMN BOOK that I read and loved and have never, ever been able to track down... (it's a group of children who find some magical things in a trunk - including a magical ring that they accidentally lose down a sewer grate and have to fish it out with string, a paper clip, and a wad of gum... also including a pair of "seven league" boots that allow one step to take a person miles away... and I think there was a cloak, too - and for gods sake, if you know the title of this book PLEASE TELL ME SOONEST. K, thx).

Should you look up these books, probably the Girl with the Silver Eyes is the one with the simplest, most straight-forward narrative, and pondering this fact, I suspect this is why I am so often aggravated with contemporary fiction.

I am reading the wrong stuff.

Light, fluffy, depthless... all too often fiction leaves me just... bored. I loathe the characters that are obsessed with their Ultra-rich but otherwise personality-less love interests. I can't stay with a TSTL (too-stupid-to-live) character for longer than five minutes. Amateurish narrative that makes no effort to enjoy language - argh. The author telling me the story but not allowing me deep enough inside to actually experience it as if I were there... these things I don't tolerate for long.

And before you point out the obvious, I am probably writing the wrong stuff, too.

Yes. I am still a baby-fiction-writer, learning my craft, which is always most apparent to me when I find myself immersed in kick-ass writing, falling in love with both the characters and the authors who create them.

Back to my childhood, sitting under that tree and resting from the weight of my pack of books... I'd take one book out after another, spread them around me, leaf through the first few pages, always taking a bit of delight in the decision of which one to read first.

I would read the dedication page, and ponder what it takes to have an author dedicate a whole book to you. To me, the small voice so often unheard within the confines of the crowd of boisterous aggressive personalities who surrounded, terrified, and overwhelmed me both because I am physically small, and (because I was) timid and shy - it would be amazing to affect someone who wrote books that much. To be the one, picked out of the crowd, recognized as not so much special, but just... worth knowing. Maybe even worth knowing well.

I just finished a beta read for the next book in my favorite series of all my lifetime. Allie's War. I'm not going to talk about this particular installment, but JC Andrijeski takes my breath away. And she takes me back to the complicated stories of my childhood, the ones I edged my teeth on, in that they are NOT "easy." They are not simple. The story world requires an investment of intelligence both from the writer and the reader. The series has depth, betrayal. romance, tragedy... history,  mythology, and a political and religious climate that are often at odds with each other, and you must pay attention to enjoy them.

I said this about book five, Knight and I'll say it about book six, War - dropping into the story is like communing with old friends whom I've been missing desperately since our separation.

And just wait until you read the dedication page.

SM Johnson ~ Thursday Morning Coffee ~ Honestly

Well this is very strange. I wrote and scheduled Thursday Morning Coffee yesterday, and somehow the muddling thing disappeared.

Probably just as well, really, because I was having a total bitch fest,  deeply upset by the idea of people reviewing and rating books they haven't read. This is so one of my hot buttons.

Positive or negative, if the thing hasn't been actually read by you, personally, you really aren't qualified to write a review. This should be a no-brainer, shouldn't it? How can you have an opinion, particularly of a book, if you haven't experienced it?

All right. I'll jump off the box now, nobody's listening, anyway.

I shall leave you, my darlings, with a toast...

Here's to new people who come into your life completely unexpectedly, and the feeling that you've been waiting to meet this person for years. That is awesome-sauce. And bacon wrapped chocolate covered cherries. Mmmmm. Bliss. Happiness.

PS. Weird and more weird - the original post landed in my in-box on my phone. Still doesn't exist here. Oh, and I stole both "awesome-sauce" and "bacon wrapped chocolate covered cherries" - FYI.

Addendum: Lost post found - apparently when I set it to auto-post, I set it for a date that's already history. Let's have a scavenger hunt - find it and leave a comment that I'm not a complete lunatic, and I'll send you an ebook from my Books tab.

SM Johnson ~Arrrggghh! Typos! ~

Oh. My. God. I finished reading this wonderful, terrible, beautiful, awful manuscript called Psychomotor Agitation: by the astonishing (legendary?) XIX... and am, for the moment, ruined for reading other authors.

Oh, it will pass, surely. As soon as I read everything by XIX (click the squares, then click "show this deviation anyway") that I can set my greedy little eyes upon.

In the meantime, I'm reading my new release on my kindle, and have found an embarrassing number of typos. And I mean a horrible, gut-wrenching amount of embarrassing typos.

Sigh. I do apologize.

I will be uploading a new file, probably sometime today.

If you've received a free copy directly from me, you'll have to suck it up.

If you've purchased it on Amazon, I'd advise waiting a couple of days before starting to read, because Amazon should send you a notification of an updated file. I think it takes up to 24 hours for the new file to go live.

That's it, I'm firing my copy-editor.

Self - you're fired.

Ha.

Perhaps one day I should HIRE one. Trouble is, most of the typos I INSERTED MYSELF while editing... because I can't ever stop tinkering.

Peace, darlings.

***UPDATE***Three in the Dungeon, available NOW, exclusiv...

***UPDATE***

Three in the Dungeon, available NOW, exclusively at Amazon! (For the time being).

Amazon status for Three in the Dungeon.... "Publishing." It shall be there soon, my darlings!

Meanwhile, there is an ugly orange truck outside my house, and some really cold guys cutting down our tree. I mean cold in a couple different ways - first because it is 14 degrees out there, and I'm sure they are COLD. Second because it is the only tree in our front yard, and the cold bastards are cutting it down. I could just cry. I love trees, and we only have 2 live ones and one dead one in our yard - and after now it will be 1 live one and 1 dead one. Damn it.

This tree business is apparently making way for the dirt-diggers that will come tomorrow to rip up my March-frozen front yard, because our pipes froze yesterday. And then they broke. And then the far-underground water main is also frozen or corroded, and the Water Power company couldn't turn it off there even with a big pokey-T-stick thing. Which basically means that our basement is flooding and pretty much continues to flood. Go our house. Home-ownership is like one of those dreams in which everything floats along very most lovely, until all of a sudden it bites you. Grr.

Started a new book, by the way. Yeah, I know. That's like TWO new books started in the past couple of months. Added to the what... four Works in Progress that I already had going on? It's a wonder anything ever gets finished. I wish, wish, wish I could just sit tight on one thing and just DO IT from beginning to end, you know?

No, I don't know what stops me from doing that. Life in general, I guess.

For a while it was DeVante's Choice, but I've got leave from my publisher to put that baby on hold pretty much indefinitely - considering I have spent hours and days and months tinkering with it and it still doesn't feel "right" to me. Like I need a book in between Coven and Choice. Or some short stories. Or a novella... hmm.... maybe a book of short stories. But these other projects are giving me such pressure that they must be born and examined first.

I shall take another look at Ian and Piper and see if that one's next (more novella length)... and decide between it and the new story - both of which are het porn - gah! What is going on with me? Not one, but TWO het projects? Must've hit my head or something.

I think I am already saving Angel for next year - he is so decadently and deliciously naughty... that he must wait. There's a "style" or "voice" thing working within me, and I think I shall practice a bit before unleashing it on Angel, because I need Angel to be and keep being so utterly beautiful that he hurts you in the chest and the naughty bits.

Meanwhile... I am reading Psychomotor Agitation: a WIP by an intensely talented writer who goes by XIX or the Nineteen. I heard a rumor one could email him and get the whole file, and it turned out to be true. I'm not going to say much more about that, you can google or go browse Deviant Art dot com on your own... because I want you buying and reading Dungeon Three this weekend, not Psychomotor Agitation. And besides, I have decided that I don't want to be the one who leads you down the 19 path and wrecks you. That would be cruel. Absolutely yummy, but still cruel.

Have a wonderful weekend, my darlings. I will be alternately stuck in book promotion hell and sliding into evil serial killer bliss.

SM Johnson ~Three in the Dungeon ~ FRIDAY!

Here we go... Coming FRIDAY MARCH 22nd!





Is love enough to forsake power exchange?
Life is good for long-term partners Roman Preston and Jeff Johnson; living in Gigi's house in Minnesota, Roman's got his woodshop and cabinet contracts, and Jeff his writing, and they're building a loving egalitarian relationship. Everything changes when Vanessa and the baby move in, of course, but they all seem to be settling happily into family life.
But when Jeff's BDSM erotic fiction becomes the latest Amazon Indie success story, Roman can't help but wonder… if Jeff is still kinky in his head, what about his heart?






The synopsis is pretty simple, honestly not sure if I'll leave it like that or what, but the truth is SO MUCH happens in this book, that if I try to tease everything in the synopsis, it will be information overload. So I'm still sort of working on that.

Built the table of contents today. Added all my copyright stuff, including a credit to the AMAZING cover photographer, Karina Tischlinger, iStock.com... made sure the chapter breaks are in place... blah blah blah blah ***insert mind-numbing-ly boring formatting tasks here***

I will be uploading to Amazon Wednesday night, so if there aren't any glitches, it might be available slightly earlier than Friday.

If you buy, if you read, and if you find any typos, I would be ever so grateful to hear from you. Seems a few here and there always sneak through, or get in there fresh during the editing process. Drop me an email or a comment with the word, phrase, or sentence that contains the typo - that's all I need to seek and destroy. I'm a Virgo. I'd rather fix it than let them be out there embarrassing my perfectionist self.

Peace, darlings.

SM Johnson ~Thursday Morning Coffee ~ Don't

I have been talking to beta readers and working diligently on getting Three in the Dungeon ready for release on March 22nd. It's going pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

And I read something.

Well, I am always reading something, of course, but between yesterday and today, I read something remarkable. It was an ebook, but I have ordered the paperback because now I must hold it in my hands and flip through the pages and keep it on my bookshelf FOREVER.




Genre(s): Gay, Romance, Suspense, BDSM

"Don't... open me."

Three simple words that tease Jack, taking him places from his dark past. For Jack, BDSM is a way to resist his worst impulses. Yet, the stranger calling himself The Unknown seeks to use that to seduce him.

As Jack slips further down into the abyss, two men hold the power to save him. Will it be Gray, the Master who knows Jack's every secret? Or Jan, the first man to give Jack a reason to hope? With deadly ghosts coming out to play, Jack may lose everything, even his life.

Novel (120,000 words)
(M/M - For content labels and excerpt, see details on publisher's site.)





The author's site  (Jack L. Pyke) talks about a sequel in the works, as well as a collaborative project where two authors trade characters - wow, how fun does that sound? Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to borrow someone else's people and see how they fare in my demented world.

Anyway. Don't is freaking amazing. A-maze-ing. Couldn't put it down. Pretty much rocked my world. BDSM. M/M (and sometimes even another M in there)... suspense, scary bad guys... amazing good guys, really complicated main guy. Oh, yeah, and it's long - 120,000 words - you get a lot of story for your money. Yummy story.

Dang.

Finished reading it today, ordered the paperback, and started reading the ebook all over again.

So there's that. I love a new obsession. Here's a link to the book on Goodreads, where there are some reviews to read, if you want to check them out.

That's all I got for coffee this morning, cuz I am wrecked.

Hope you're all looking forward to an amazing weekend!

~SM

SM Johnson ~Three in the Dungeon cover ~

available at istock photoOooh! I'm so excited! I've been working on a cover for Three in the Dungeon, and although it almost seemed too "easy" - I love the simplicity of what I came up with.

It was also the, hmm... maybe 5th cover I've designed using a free graphic design program called GIMP, and for the first time ever, I didn't have to refer to a tutorial! I'm very proud of myself, hee.

All right, meet Roman Preston! (okay, it's not actually Roman, just a model who quite beautifully represents my vision of Roman). Nice disclaimer, huh?

I had several ideas for the cover - I knew that I wanted some black and white contrast, to keep the 3 books looking like a cohesive set... I also initially wanted some BDSM symbolism, and at least a dash of the color red... so I spent a bunch of hours browsing Bigstock Photo and iStock Photo sites, downloading sample images (like the one above) that I could stare at and just... I don't know, get them dancing around in my creative brain. I'm much more of a word artist that a visual media artist, but sometimes just the browsing for images is inspirational.

At one point, I was looking for 3 or more models, to represent not only Roman, but Jeff and Jason, and even Vanessa... but, frankly, the learning curve of melding/merging three or more images - eeeek! I know I CAN do it (am capable), because I merged my own picture of the chain with an istock photo on for the Out of the Dungeon cover. But we'll get to that.

While browsing, I ran into some photos I hadn't seen before, but had the same model I liked for books one and two. Gotta say, I'm kind of a sucker for continuity. So... it just felt right to play with those pics first.

Because I was using downloaded samples, I put together a quick and rough mock-up, and....

Truth? Kinda loved it.

So late late LATE last night (4 am this morning, actually), I made the commitment and purchased the photo. Not the one above, but a similar one... and then today I put the sucker together.

Ready?  (drum roll, please....)



Yeah, I kind of love it.

I changed the font color of my name on Above the Dungeon, as well, so I might be uploading a new version of that one, as well. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a GIMP copy of Out of the Dungeon, so if I want to change the color of my author name, I'll have to re-build it from scratch, and it was the more complicated (merging 2 images), so I'm not sure when/ if I'll be motivated to get it done.

So here's books one and two, for comparison:




And now I'm off to bed, because I have worn myself out!

Hope your weekend is being awesome, darlings!