Crazy Submitting Fiend

Wow, so I've had a busy last couple of weeks. I've submitted Furious Lust to my editor at EC (wish me luck), subbed three shorts, and a novella. The odds of them all getting accepted are pretty exciting but I won't know for a while and I'm trying to stay aloof on the off chance that none of them work out.

Ever the optimist.

Right this minute I'm editing another novella for my EC editor and writing a manuscript that got lost in The Great Flashdrive Debacle of 2011. It's hard to rewrite MS's that were so far along but I'm doing my best to stay true to the original while writing bigger and better. Hopefully, you'll be seeing a lot of me in 2012.

On a more random note, a good friend of mine sent me Celestial Season's Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Herbal Tea in the mail--my whole week has been made. That stuff is like indulging in the holidays all year round with no calories. It's fantabulous. Highly recommended. Five stars and two thumbs up. Doesn't even need sugar or milk, which is awesome, because lately I take my tea with neither trying to cut calories. Because I'm awesome like that, I know.

I'm also plowing through my TBR pile right now. Finally getting burnt out on the Stephanie Plum kick I've been on for five books straight and turning to Larissa Ione's second book in the incubus series, Desire Unchained, which I'm liking much more than the first book in that series. I'm a little late to a lot of these series mostly because I like to stick to my pool of tried and true authors before anything else new. Lucky for new authors, my tried and true team have ended a couple of series and I'm free for new reads.

But I still have an awesome backlog of cozy mysteries, 80's bodice rippers, Megan Hart, and Joey W Hill's back-list to devour. Seems like lately there isn't one thing in my life that isn't planned down to the second--including what I read and when. Haven't decided if that's a good thing or not--but yay for productivity!

A Little Update Here, A Little Update There

Lately my brain is more scrambled than eggs--and more mushy! But I've somehow stumbled into doing my projects in stages and I'm finding that with my creative process and my thinking process working on six different projects at once really, really doesn't work. It's kind of epic.

Though I did a lot in the end of 2011, a lot of the work was edits ready to be transferred into a hard document on Word. Which means I had 6 or 7 projects lined up and ready to go by January. Somehow, I also managed to start writing three completely different projects these last couple months while still having at least four others open and ready to edit/ half-written.

Needless to say my life is a little complicated. But, wait! There's good news! So far this year I've managed to:

• Send out 2 shorts
• I've completed a novel, two novellas, and a short that need to have one edit and one final read-through
• I've written 11,173 words on new projects
• I've written 44,229 words total including edits and old projects (Not a huge word count in the past three months by any means but my main focus has been on editing everything from 2011 to get it out into the world)
• And I've still yet to conquer the old half written projects from last year.

Yeah, I'm not doing any of this again. Once everything from 2011 is in the works and done, done, done--I'm only working on one project at a time like in the good ol' days. The three work in progresses I've started this year will have to wait patiently on the back burner until I can get to it, otherwise I'll never catch up! Luckily, a majority of the stuff I'm submitting is all going to the same publisher. Hellllloooo, back list!

To Short Or Not To Short?

The question I'm dealing with today is whether or not short-short's make sense for a career as a tool and as a product that people want to buy. From my experience I think short pieces from 2-6k words are invaluable as a way to introduce to people to your work. Their also great promotional tools on other websites and in print anthologies. Personally, I like them because they offer me a change of pace from my other longer works. But they also get me into print which is something that I wouldn't normally have access to because in this stage of my career I'm more focused on e-publishers than traditional NY.

So the benefits of a change of pace and cross promotion in several mediums work well for me. Though I know other people find the short range cheap and not worth their time as writing a full novel. There's an odd art to picking the perfect word knowing that you only have so many to work with--at least, that's what I think. What do you think? Do shorts benefit the readers? Are they helpful introductions or wastes of time?

Breaking Dawn: Final Verdict and Other Random Bits

I finally did the inevitable, broke down, and rented Breaking Dawn. And I have to say so far it was my favorite of all of the movies. Yes, I have seen them all. So it was nice to see the actor's progress and it really didn't feel like there was a whole lot of whining or horrible, awful cheesy lines.Except for the wedding speeches, of course.All and all, I would have watched it again. Which is more than a little weird, but I'll go with it. I think they handled everything about this movie well, though Taylor Lautner still can't act worth a damn and seeing him shirtless doesn't do a damn thing for me. I still have a lot of new releases to catch up with which makes me a little antsy, I like to be on top of my movies. But that also means I've been getting more work done with writing. Good news for everyone!

On the writing front, I've got three projects to a stage of secondary editing. A novel and two novellas. Hopefully, you'll be seeing those soon from Ellora's Cave. Two of them are of the BDSM variety and the other one is lesbian with a bit of kink. I'm really hard a work getting as much out into the world as I can in the next couple of months so bare with me if the blog slows down a bit. It's only because I'm making words on a lot of other projects.

In other news, I've joined the craze and enrolled myself in Pinterest. So if you want, come find me and take a look at my inspirations, covers, and various other doo-dad's that pop into my brain.

The Ultimate Eyecandy With Whedon

Can't even tell you how excited I am to see The Avengers. Not only is it directed by my all time most favoritest guy in the whole wide world, Joss Whedon, but any excuse to cuddle up with Tony Stark for another couple hours? Oh, I'm so there! Combine that with an all access pass for watching Scarlett Johanson in black leather? Yeah, do we see any issues with this movie? Didn't think so.