Post Venus

Wow... I kind of can't believe that I have completely finished the Venus Rising series.  At this time last year I hadn't even started publishing anything on Amazon, wasn't even thinking about it, and now I've completed both the Poker Loser Trilogy and the Venus Rising Quartet.  That's kind of insane.  And awesome.  But insane.  I have to say, I'm thrilled that people enjoy my work so much.  Wow... I just looked at Literotica.  At this time last year, I was only halfway through writing Venus School of Sex.  Crazy!

Thank you to everyone who has left a review on Venus Transcendent so far, I really appreciate it!  Please keep letting me know what you think =)

Now that Venus is done I've been concentrating on getting the next chapter of Marriage Training completed for Lit.  I'm going to be submitting it tonight so it should (hopefully) be out later this week, dependent on Lit's submission pace.  I'm also getting my focus back into Dealing With Discipline and I'm getting back into working on Stronghold.

Dealing With Discipline will be coming out before Stronghold though, although it's possible they won't be far apart in release dates.  It really depends on how fast each of them come along.  I had already done some work on Stronghold months ago, and although it needs a little editing to accommodate how Adam has developed and a few changes that I decided to make for Angel's character, I've already basically completed the first couple chapters.  Woo!

Now, I really do read every single comment / review that gets left on Amazon or my blog and I just thought I'd address some things people had mentioned...

I realize that Venus Transcendent doesn't really have a definitive "the end."  There are several reasons for this, the first of which is that I didn't want to force a wedding (or two weddings) just to feel like I'd "ended" the story.  The second of which is that their stories are going to continue throughout the Stronghold series.  So the end of Rising isn't really a goodbye, it's a "we'll see you later."  And I'm looking forward to the later even though we won't be seeing it from the Venus character's points of view anymore.  The final reason is that I can't stand it when characters get pushed to wrap things up in a neat little bow at the end of the series, even if they don't really seem ready for it.  Jessica and Hilary have decided what they want, they've overcome the obstacles that were set up for them in their books, and while I suppose I could manufacture new obstacles for them it would feel like just that... manufactured.   I'd much rather just watch them through their friend's eyes while they go through their own stories.  Trust me, we'll be seeing a lot of all the characters in the subsequent books.  And I will probably be writing novellas for them in the future, but they won't be full out books.

The reason Master Adam is next in line is because, well... it's his turn.  Even though he didn't really want it to be.  Although Master Rick is more actively looking for a sub, he's not ready to find one yet.  I totally understand why it seems like Lexie and Patrick's story should be next, but they're not ready yet either.  There's a lot of conflict going on there and things are going to come to a much bigger boil before their book - something that I'm really looking forward to in the next couple of books.

I have a lot of things that I'm really excited about upcoming stories, in both series. I wish I could write a million times faster than I physically can, but I got the Quartet done in under a year and I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to keep up the pace for future releases!

Venus is Out - Freebie Day May 18th

Okay... Venus Transcendent is now available on Amazon!

However I couldn't get the promotion together in time for it to be free on Friday unfortunately, so Saturday May 18th will be its freebie day.

Thank you to those of you who have already hunted it down and started buying it... you amaze and flatter me.  Like, seriously... you have no idea how much it thrills me and makes me feel all warm and gooshy inside that people are that darn eager to read my stuff.

Please please please don't forget to leave a review!  They help me tremendously and I read every single one that I get.  Especially since I'm going to be continuing this series (albeit focusing on different characters) with the Stronghold series, it's always good to know what people loved and what they thought needed work. 

Happy weekend everyone!

Venus Transcendent Has Been Submitted!

YAY!

I submitted the final book in the Venus Quartet to Amazon tonight!

Amazon is usually pretty quick so there's a good chance that it will be out tomorrow... in which case it will have its freebie day on Friday.  If that's the case then I'll announce that on Friday morning of course, although you can always keep an eye out for it yourself if you don't feel like waiting for me ;)

I'm really close to being finished with the next chapter of Marriage Training, that should hopefully be submitted by early next week and (if I'm lucky) out later next week.

I'm away this weekend though, doing some awesome rafting and outdoor adventuring which I'm looking forward to.  Maybe will help with the storyline that I'm putting together for the next Literotica contest ;) Woo! hahaha. Although I've already got a pretty good idea - more than one person suggested a camping theme to me and I've taken specifics from all those suggestions to put together a pretty awesome plotline (I think).  Now I just have to write it! LOL

Feeling really good about Venus Transcendent... Hopefully it'll come out quick!

By the End of This Week

By the end of this week, Venus Transcendent will be available.

I'm working on editing at the moment and am trying to do a better initial job rather than pushing the book to get out faster.  It's always a toss up between making people wait longer for the release and taking more time to do a more thorough editing job.  I'm lucky in that I've got a couple other eyes looking at Transcendent for me in addition to my own, which should help matters.  But it's done... finished... caput. WOO! And I should hopefully be able to do the editing quickly AND thoroughly.  My goal is to have it submitted to Amazon by Wednesday evening so that it will hopefully be available by sometime on Thursday and have its Freebie day on Friday.

That's the goal at the moment!

The other nice thing is that now I can focus a bit more on getting the next chapter of Marriage Training out as well, for all the patiently waiting Lit. readers.  Sorry!  Shouldn't have another long wait like that hopefully.  And I'll be able to get back into doing more writing for Dealing With Discipline as well since I'm hoping to get that one out by the end of June / early July.

I'm super excited for the advent of Stronghold later this summer too.  There will be a teaser at the end of Venus Transcendent and next week I'll post a secondary teaser here on the blog, just to give everyone an idea of what we have to look forward to in the world of Stronghold.  =)

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!!!  I had a wonderful time with my Mom and family doing some hiking and being outdoors. Gorgeous weather fortunately!  Although, seeing all the little kids running around on Mother's Day did not make me eager to join the ranks of celebrating Moms lol.   I am so not ready for that job yet!

One Chapter Away!

I am one chapter and one epilogue away from completing Venus Transcendent! Soooooooo excited.  I've poured a lot of work into it the past couple of weeks.  The whole catching up with my writing after the crazy busyness at work for the past few months has been kind of brutal.  Obviously I haven't been able to do as much output with Marriage Training while I'm trying to get Venus out in a timely manner.

But soon I'll be back to my usual prolific self with Literotica since I'll be focusing equally on Marriage Training and Dealing with Discipline.  YAY!

Wrapping up the Venus series is an interesting experience for me because I've literally been involved with these characters for close to a year now... and also because their stories are going to continue beyond the series. Unlike the Poker Loser trilogy, I don't plan on ending this series with a wedding, because I don't feel like the characters are there yet.  But the main focus on them has ended, although of course we'll still be seeing plenty of them in the Stronghold series.

Also, I'm now setting myself up on Goodreads thanks to a fan who pointed out to me that I needed to get on there.  Going to be doing that this weekend when I'm not busy apartment hunting, celebrating Mother's Day, seeing a friend from out of town and editing Venus.  Yeah... gonna be a little busy. Which is why my goal is to finish the book today.  Hopefully the one chapter won't morph into two... but either way I'm going to try to finish it up today!

WOO!

Hope everyone has a good weekend =)

Enough With the Life-Threatening Danger Already!

GAH.

Biggest pet peeve as a reader. 

I was really getting into a story that I'd downloaded for free on Kindle.  The love story was interesting, two guys vying for girl's attention, little bit of a mystery, and just a hint of danger... and then BOOM. all of the sudden the guy that's supposed to be the normal dude (okay, super sexy and alpha male, but not royalty) turns out to be even MORE important than the Prince that has been showing interest in the heroine... he turns out to be Prince's big brother but he's been hiding out from his royal heritage and now the King and Queen are incensed because the heroine isn't their idea of marriage material for one of their sons and so now they're trying to kill her. 

Completely disgusted, I deleted the book from my Kindle immediately and went to check things out online.  It's got two more books of the King and Queen trying to chase her down and put an end to the "problem" permanently.  A lot of people really liked it, going by the reviews, but I have just been completely wrung out by the number of books that have to throw in some crazy danger in order to make the story "exciting." It was already exciting darn it! I was excited by the love triangle and the fact that I thought the "normal" every day man was going to win out over the prince for once! (which, also, gave me a story idea).

This morning I was checking out a sample on my Kindle for a book that seemed super interesting about a town way out in rural England where people still basically acted like a Medieval town and every so often there is a "finding year" where new people can be introduced to and brought into the community.  The heroine is on her way in, hired by the Lord of the town, and she's about to find out exactly what it's like to be beholden to an alpha-male heavy-handed spanker.  WOO! Super exciting right? And then comes the other two perspectives in the book, both jealous females, both "hating" the heroine upon appearance and one of them already planning to do dastardly deeds. 

I lost interest.

Sure these elements of danger add to the plot somewhat, but they also tend to (in my opinion) take away from the character / romance development.  What's the easiest way to make an alpha male who's sworn off love admit to his feelings? Make the heroine almost die so that he has to face what life would be like without her!  

Does it work? Sure. But it also covers a multitude of sins, the biggest being that of not enough romance development. Instead of having to work to win the regard of the girl when he's been pushing her away the whole book, they BOTH get to suddenly realize that life is short and they should make the most of it.  Personally I'd rather see the guy have to work to open up and let the heroine in, to woo her in the manner she deserves. 

I know that's just a personal preference... but I felt like ranting about it.  

This is why even though Bridget and Garrett were effected by the showdown with Patrick in Being the Maid, it didn't immediately bring them together as a couple.  Because I feel like it's a bandaid over an emotional problem rather than a true fix.  There are a few storylines in my head that I'd like to write that do have danger in them, possibly life-threatening, but it's because of the nature of the careers the characters have chosen... and also, I'm going to do my best to keep it from ever effecting the emotional progress of the characters.  If I even get around to writing those books because every time I get annoyed with a book for doing that it makes me want to focus on my books that have no crazy life threatening issues. 

There are, of course, authors that do it well and whose stories I enjoy.  Stephanie Laurens and Lexie Blake spring to mind as two of my favorite authors whose characters are often in some sort of danger at some point during their books.  But for the most part, I wish there were more books that were just focused on the romance / character development and didn't feel the need to nearly kill the heroine in order to get the hero to commit. Ya know?!

Anyway.  Going on in my own world - Venus Transcendent is so close to being done, but it probably won't be out till next week because I've accepted a very kind offer to help me with editing.  The first version put out still won't be perfect but we'll be cleaning it up and putting out a new version not long afterwards - and people who have already bought it are able to download subsequent versions easily which is the nice thing about Amazon.  I just finished Chapter 16 today. I think I have four more to go. My goal is to write a chapter a day for the rest of this week, get as much editing done over the weekend and the beginning of next week as possible and then get this baby out there. Woo!

Poker Loser Trilogy Now Available on Smashwords

Okay...

So I had to pull books 1 & 2 of the Poker Loser Trilogy from Smashwords when I went back through them and did a bunch of editing so that I could re-offer them for a freebie day on Amazon / make it possible for them to be borrowed for a few months. They are no longer borrowable from Amazon, but they are now available, along with #3, on Smashwords for all the non-Kindle readers =)

Here's the link

At the moment it's looking like I'm not going to have Venus Transcendent finished by this weekend, but it should be done sometime next week if I keep up the pace that I have going (which I plan to). WOO!!!!