What the #@$& am I Looking At??

After a busy, busy week around the house, we really need to drop some updates!

Firstly, the first book in the Parliament of Twilight series is back in the top 20 for LGBT Horror.

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And that’s super, duper exciting after our feature on Queer Sci Fi earlier this week.

In addition to that (and only sort of related to our books but still awesome), Nevi has been working with a new art technique and it’s turned out some amazing results. You can see the first of them on her Deviant Art page.

For those of you who are hoping that we’ll drop some more things for you to spend money on, there is our Patreon page. We’re working on some exclusive content that will (fingers crossed) drop around the end of February and you’ll be the first in the know about our upcoming releases, get sneak peeks at the new covers as they are designed, and exclusive looks between the covers of the Parliament of Twilight books. Also, free eBooks of all our new releases for anyone who donates $5 or more per month.

And I thought there’d be more to talk about, but editing is pretty boring. It’s mostly me staring at words and praying they make sense outside of my head.

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Fall in Love with the Parliament of Twilight series

As part of the Valentine’s blog hop brought to us by the lovely Nicki J Markus, I’m going to talk a little bit about the Parliament of Twilight series.

 

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What is the Parliament of Twilight?  Well, it started as several different LGBT-centric series that were loosely tied together in the same world. But that didn’t work out. There was far too much overlap to keep the writing straight (never was any hope for keeping those characters straight, LOL). Nevi and I were straining ourselves to build the world and plots in a way that kept everything making sense. But when you have 3 storylines with the potential for more, all running concurrently, it makes for a mess.

So, from the ashes rose the new idea of just lumping it all together and being able to fill out everyone’s stories in one continuous series. We couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. The main three couples are still working their messes out (but what romances are messy at the beginning?), but the background story of the shady organization of the Parliament of Twilight is intact and flows beautifully.

When people ask us how long the series is going to be, the best answer we can give is that it will be as long as it needs to be to tell the wholestory. But the rough estimate that we can give with how much we’ve told in the nearly 7 episodes we’ve written is that in the area of 25 volumes should cover the complicated main story arc as well as leaving space for the main cast to get their happy endings. And yes, despite what you might believe from reading the first few episodes, we do intend for almost all the cast to have happy endings.

It’s a daunting task, writing something that by its very nature is so long, but we’re so very excited about the story and the characters. There’s a flavor for every taste.

You like cute little twinks, we have Brodie and Chip. Into the older hot men? There’s RT, his twin Quentin, and Jacob (but don’t tell him we said he was “older”!) Cross-dressers? We’ve got Stefan. Bisexuals? There’s a few of those too. Red-heads, blonds, guys with accents. Whatever you want, I’m sure we can find it for you within the pages of this far-reaching series.

We frequently refer to this series as being “yaoi and/or anime inspired” because it is, to a spectacular degree. We have some very ridiculous, over the top scenes. The story lines are beset with misunderstandings, super powers, vampires, evil organizations, redemption, betrayal, laughter and tears. It’s melodramatic and shameless. It’s sexy and dangerous. There are monsters everywhere, but you can never tell if it’s the creature with the teeth and claws or the beautiful man at your side.

It’s everything we love scribbled down in black and white.

We’ve had a blast writing it so far, and hope you enjoy reading it just as much. Enjoy!

And once you’ve indulged in all things Parliament, pop back over to this post on Nicki Markus’s blog to see the other awesome authors who are in the blog hop!

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Just a Thought About Writing This Thing

After discovering in horror that the POT: Ep 3 was going to fall short of our minimum goal of 50K (like, massively short. Like 14K short!!), we decided to extend it, using the first scenes we have written of Ep 4.

I was worried, but now Ep 3 doesn’t end on the exact same scene that Ghost House did. I happy that we made the change, because if we had released a book that had the same ending as the book that didn’t work right, I would have been mortified. We are re-writing the series and I want it to be treated differently. Every volume doesn’t need to end on a massive cliff hanger (though some of them do!).

We are intentionally treating the new series like each volume is a new episode in a TV show (hence why we call them “Episodes” rather than “volumes” or “books”). Sometimes you don’t get all the answers in one episode. Sometimes you go an entire episode without seeing one of the characters. Sometimes it takes several episodes to resolve something.

That’s the idea we have as we’re building this series. Every scene is important to the end game. Every character has a role to play. And every Episode builds on the last one, making something that’s really much more awesome than I could have ever hoped for.

🙂

Unplug with a Good Old Fashioned Book

Are you feeling overwhelmed with the rush of modern technology?  Turn off your gadgets for  a few hours and tuck in with a good old-fashioned paperback!  Get a fresh batch from Lulu.com for 10% off cover price.

Check out the paperbacks for the Parliament of Twilight books — Episode 1 & 2 are available as well as the special illustrated edition of Episode 1.

Today and tomorrow only, get 10% off all print books with code UNPLUG10.

Is it Still November? NaNoWriMo: Day 14

Working on a complete rewrite of the final scene of the Parliament of Twilight: Ep 2. It was pitifully short and left out WAY too much information that is relevant to the plot. It’s a scene most everyone has seen before, being one from Ghost House, but that’s what makes the rewriting it so important. It’s the vital cliffhanger moment at the end of the Episode. It can’t be weak. It just can’t.

In NaNo news, I haven’t touched In a Different Light in 3 days now. I’m pitifully behind, but once I’ve finished this POT: EP2 scene, I’m going to have loads more time on my hands to catch up and finish by the end of the month.

Other than being an insane person about how much writing I’m getting done on a daily basis, life is finally quieting down.  But I think that’s because it’s winter now and the whole world seems to slow down when it gets cold.  I know I always seem to.  But this winter, I won’t be hibernating with a pile of books and gallons of cocoa.  I’m going to be keeping up the schedule I’ve set for myself during NaNo.  Three hours minimum daily for writing tasks.  At least one hour a day for reading (because if I don’t take in words, how on earth am I going to churn them out?)  And the usual couple hours of watching anime or TV with Nevi and cooking foods for my Crew.

Still NaNo-ing, Day 8

It’s 8 days into NaNoWriMo, also known as November, the month between Halloween and Christmas, and (my personal favorite) “what the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I doing this to myself AGAIN?”

But eight days in and I haven’t quit.  I’ve got a bit on the NaNo Rebel side, and added a short story of approximately 4K words to my count, but it was completely written within the last 3 days, so it counts as new words.  Today, I’m caught up to my word count goal for NaNo, but a hair behind what I wanted my personal goal to be.  But that’s OK.  I have several days this week where I know for a fact I’ll have 6 to 8 hours of work time.  And more where it’ll be around 4 hours.  That’s the advantage of being a full time writer, I suppose.

How is everyone else doing on their NaNo?  I have a few friends who are doing it for the first time this year, and they are rocking it out!  I’m eager to share our projects at the end of the month.  That is, if they’re not too shy!

In other news, in addition to working on NaNo and our secret short story project, I’ve also been maintaining edits on the Parliament of Twilight: Episode 2.  It’s looking to be done before the end of the month.  Then it’s just sending it on the rounds of beta reading, editing, re-betaing, editing one more time, and the final read-through before it gets formatted and published.  Fingers crossed that it will be out for Christmas, but at least the pre-order will be up by then with the Episode itself being out just after the first of the year.

Soon, we will be doing a cover reveal.  Not sure of the date, but watch our Facebook page for details!

NaNoWriMo Day 4

Well, Day 3 left me with nothing to report, but a frustratingly long night of dealing with crappy customer service.  But that was yesterday and this is today.

I’ve kept up my NaNo numbers.  Not much ahead of the game at the moment, but I’m hoping that I can fix that in the next couple of days.  We have a long block planned for tomorrow that we’re calling our “NaNo PartyTime!”  There will be 4 to 6 hours of crazy writing and everyone’s going to get fucked up on fresh brewed tea and Asian chicken with rice!  It’ll be a wild time.

And, just to keep the crazy turned up to 11, Nevi and I decided that we needed to write a short story in the middle of NaNo!  It’s nearly done now. We’re on the last few paragraphs of the rough draft and then tomorrow, during our crazy party time, I’m going to do the first typing and rough edits.

We’ll see what comes of that.  Stay tuned for details!

NaNo Day 2

After ending day 1 with a pretty solid start and a plan that I think that I like for the rest of the month, I’m feeling pretty confident about this NaNo.  I’m proud to report that I’ve drafted two of my real life friends to the NaNo cult!  And one of them beat me out with our day one word count!  I’m feeling a bit competitive now and am going to have to end day 2 with a higher count than her. (You know who you are!)

But seriously, this is actually really cool.  I’ve been enjoying NaNo for a while and I hope that they have fun too.  And I might FINALLY get those stories out of them that they’ve been hiding for years now!

Other than NaNo, not much else to report.  Oh, we’ve been filling up our Etsy store and the Storenvy shop isn’t far behind.  We have copies of our illustrated Paperback edition of the Parliament of Twilight: Episode 1, and loads of art prints by Nevi in poster size (13 x 19), regular size (8 x 11) and postcards (4 x 6).  There are original characters from the POT series and some stunning fanarts, like these awesome Halloween pics of Ciel and Sebastian from Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji).

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