Tee Ayer's Blog, page 10

Dark Shadows is Live!

 

DARK SHADOWS
Psychological Thriller/Horror
My name���s Ella Raimi.


Until last week, my life was pretty normal for a sixteen-year-old. Until I spent that awful night trapped in the janitor’s closet in utter darkness. Until the dreams began ��� suffocating, panic-filled dreams. My best friend Kyla stays with me, but the dreams still continue. And I wake each morning with cuts & burns on my skin. I don���t recall inflicting them.


And then there is the blood on my hands and my sheets when I wake up.


I���m afraid of myself.


I’m afraid I am a killer.





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Filed under: General

Merry Christmas everyone!

We love Christmas, I think everyone who knows me knows how much I adore the silly season. Not so much the crowds, or even the presents. I’d be just as happy with a Christmas without gifts but its too fun to pass up right? Who doesn’t love giving and receiving gifts?

So usually we do roast turkey for Christmas dinner but this year we decided we will do a spit roast for a change. Now since our family isn’t large enough to justify a full lamb, or even a half one for that matter, this is what we roasted on our spits.

Lamb

And chicken!

Believe me- they were all delicious. Not often I experience that state of fullness that makes me want a long nap :)

And for dessert of course, we had to have trifle – no choice in it.

And mince pies!

So here’s hoping that your Christmas Day is filled with happiness and food and much much love.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Filed under: General

Chrsitmas Eve Dinner

Hope everyone is having an amazing holiday season. For our little family, the holidays are quite special. Being far away from extended family on special occasions can be hard, which is why we have tried to create a special atmosphere, with our own special traditions.

Yes, we do presents too, just an excuse to spoil each other, of course.

And Christmas Eve dinner is special too. The glazed ham is something we look forward to for the whole year :)

So here it is.

Christmas Eve is usually a small affair for us, but I love to create a special atmosphere. Hence the table setting. Not as fancy as I’d like it but it will do :)

The only thing missing is the white stuff- ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted a White Christmas. Gotta put that in the ‘Maybe SomeDay’ pile.

Lasty, what’s playing? What better way to bring o the season’s jolly spirit than Michael Buble.

Hope you all are having a special time. Remember, everything in moderation, peeps.

Have a safe one.

Filed under: General

Writing ‘The End’ is important.

November has come and gone, and if you are writerly, or readerly, you might have some idea of what November represents.

NANOWRIMO.

National Novel Writing Month.

A month in which hundreds of writers push themselves to write a novel in four weeks. The goal is 50 thousand words in the month. Reach the goal and you win NANO.

Now, my only gripe with NANO is who in the hell ever thought November was a good month to sit down and write without interruption? School exams? Uni exams? Diwali, Halloween, christmas cake baking and don’t forget the tree? Worst month of the year. Really.

So, did I do NANO this year? Kinda.

A group I belong to had a bunch of members with a bunch of screaming deadlines. Needless to say, I was one of them. We decided to do a mini-Nano in the hope that we will all reach our wordcount goals.

So we wrote.

And wrote.

And wrote some more.

And when I finally completed my project after 2 weeks of writing, I’d finished with 65k, writing 35k in 8 days. Some days I wrote 8k and some days I wrote 5k but I pushed myself and I reached my goal.

And let me just say that there is a strange mysteriousness about writing THE END. It marks the completion of the projection, the achievement of a goal, the acknowledgment that you weren’t just mucking around and that you were actually doing something with your time instead of surfing the net, or scrolling through FB.

I think finishing any project you start is a momentous thing. I still have a cross-stitch that I haven’t completed from ten years ago and it bugs me like crazy- when and if I ever find it, I swear I will finish the damn thing. Maybe frame it too.

The beauty of completing a project is that you can see for yourself that no matter how hard things get, there is nothing stopping you from reaching your goal. Nothing except you, that is.

The one thing that always gets me when writing is the 70% slump. Somewhere toward the end of the manuscript, I hit a wall. Back when I first started writing it took me weeks to get past it. But the more books I wrote, the better I got at finding ways to overcome that slump. Now my 70% slump may last an hour, if it happens at all.

Each book is different, each one is a completely unique writing experience, and what they give you is practice. You learn new techniques, you stop making old mistakes, maybe you learn to outline better, or make better notes. And, at the end of the day, you walk away with a completed novel.

What can you not do if you don’t have a completed first draft? Yup, you can’t edit it, or submit it, or publish it.

So the lesson is in the completion.

Finishing the book will give you something to edit, and to publish while you grin like a crazy person.

Finishing the book will give you writing muscles, train you better to write the next book.

Finishing the book says you can flip the bird at the naysayers and at that pesky devil on your shoulder that kept whispering in your ear that it was all just too hard.

Finishing the book will give you a sense of achievement, the feeling that yes, you are the kind of person that completes things, that can go the hard yards, that can accomplish what you set out to achieve.

And finishing the book also means you can start writing the next one :)

And let me add here that this doesn’t only apply to writers and writing. It’s applicable to all things in life that are difficulty to do, that take guts and stamina to achieve.

You just need a goal. And dedication.

Filed under: General

2014 In Retrospect

It’s December and Christmas is around the corner (categorically my most favourite time of the year). As it happens it’s also time to reflect on 2014 and decide if 2014 kicked my butt or was it the other way around?

In terms of health I’d say 2014 won hands down. There were far too many says spent on the wrong side of the bedcovers, but I feel I more than made up for it on the my good days.

In terms of books published here is a quick list of 2014’s releases:

Jan – Lost Soul (SkinWalker #2)

Mar – Retribution (Angels #1)

May – Blood Magic (SoulTracker #1)

July – Pyros (SkinWalker 0.5)

Aug – Blood & Gold (Kali #2)

Sep – Requiem (Angels #2)

Oct – Last Chance (SkinWalker #3)

Dec – Dead Wrath (Valkyrie #4)

Dec – Beautiful Collision (Desperation #1)

Dec – Sugar & Spice Anthology

That’s 9 books and one anthology published in 2014, so I’d guess I beat 2014 ;)

Needless to say I am a little in awe. I spent so much of the year head down, nose to the grindstone I guess I didn’t stop much to realise I was meeting and exceeding my goals. I have to admit there were many moments that I spent bemoaning the fact that I wasn’t writing fast enough or releasing fast enough, but I promise to do better in 2015.

What’s in store for 2015, you ask? This is what I have on the cards, not in order of release, and not set in stone either:

Thriller/Horror Standalones – ongoing line

Dark Shadows

Sight

Valkyrie Series

#5 Dead Silence – Series Complete

Hand of Kali Series

#3 Time & Fate – Series Complete

Desperation – NA Contemp

#2 Beautiful Conviction – Series Complete

Angels of the Irin – Extended series (9 books)

#3 Resonance

#4 Revelation

SoulTracker Series – extended series (9 books)

#2 Dark Sight

#3 Demon Kin

#4 Soul Tracker

SkinWalker Series – extended series (6 books)

#4 Blood Promise

#5 Fire Mage

Looks like a lot, right? To be honest they may not all make it to publication in 2015 but I will certainly try.

Any questions about the upcoming books or the current series please leave them in the comments :)

Happy Holidays!

Filed under: Angels of the Irin, Chronicles of the Irin, DarkWorld, New Adult, SoulTracker series, Thoughts on Stuff, Urban Fantasy, writing, Young Adult Tagged: 2015, reflections, upcoming books

Sugar & Spice Anthology – Release Day!

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BEAUTIFUL COLLISION Release Day!

I’m so excited to say that Beautiful Collision is now live! Hope you all love this book as much as I do. Eighteen year old Gray McAllister is on the run. Leaving her dangerous past behind her is easier said than done, even when she finds herself at last able to forge a new life. […]

BEAUTIFUL COLLISION Chapter 2 Sneak Peek!

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BEAUTIFUL COLLISION Chapter 1 Sneak Peek!

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Dead Wrath (Valkyrie #4) Release Day!

Dead Wrath (Valkyrie #4) Ragnarok is upon the worlds, and the time to fight is now. They come from all of the Nine Realms. Dark Elves, Dragons, Frost Giants, Elves … They all come to fight for Odin. And they answer to Valkyrie Brynhildr. While Bryn grieves, struggling to cope with Sigrun’s death, she knows […]