bookmark_borderWiP Updates!

So I’ve not done this in a while. Haven’t done much of anything here for a while. Which is sad if you squint just right.

Anyway, let’s start off with the published ones, shall we?

Butch Girls Can Fix Anything (BGCFA) was published in 2007. Yeah. It was that long ago. BGCFA won an award in 2008 with Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) for Debut Author. Even after all these years, BGCFA still sells well. Romance is THE bread and butter for lesbian writers.

To Sleep (TS), book one of The Soliloquy was published in 2013 and was a finalist in the GCLS Speculative Fiction (SF/F) category. Science Fiction does not sell well within the lesbian niche market. Which is really sad because there are some freakin’ fantastic books out there that need to be read.

To Dream (TD), book two of The Soliloquy, was published in 2015 and was a finalist in the 2016 GCLS Speculative Fiction category. Like To Sleep, it has not sold well. In fact, BGCFA continues to sell more than TS and TD combined.

Now what do I have in the works? Same stuff as always.

Butch Girls: As Advertised, another book in the unofficial “Butch Girl” series so falls into the Romance genre. Formerly known as “BG2”, it was actually the first BG book I started. It is about Nicole “Nikki” Rogers and Ellen Hess. For, like, ever, I was undecided as to how to go with this book. I knew I had to make a decision or the book would forever sit there in limbo. I went with the “met through an online dating service” trope. It is slow to happen since I always always slog down in the middle.

Perchance, book three of The Soliloquy is coming along nicely. However, the publisher and I reached an agreement where any books in the series will not be published through them. I can take it to another publisher or publish them myself. I’ve chosen the self-publishing route, something I thought I would never do. That’ll learn me, right? Anyway, Perchance takes place after To Sleep (duh) and covers the gathering of the Enixi. Karen and the rest of First House plod on.

Relic. Well. What to say about this book? For some reason I am being forced inside my head to not reveal much about this book. It is mostly SF but has some F aspects. Right now it is moving far too fast and I need to find ways to slow the plot down. In some ways, I like that it is fast. I like it is skipping forward in time without me dwelling in dialogue and all that. But it really needs to go slower. To build up the anticipation of The Big Reveal.

Castanea Chronicles is a Fantasy series in the traditional three parts although I may toss in a fourth just to mess with the norm. Most F books are about the hero/heroes but this one is more about the sidekick. I have been working on these books for many, many years. 2002 I think is when I started it. I have only two projects that are older (and I consider them dead from neglect) but this one just won’t let me go.

In the Back Burner category, I have:
Butch Girls: Stereotype This (or Butch Girls and Stereotypes) – Romance
Elements – Fantasy (magic, orbs, prophecy, oh my!)
Exodus and Genesis – Science Fiction (with dystopia and utopia elements)

There. That’s it. I used to work on a lot of projects at once but I’ve worked to get it down to just three or 4. My writing is very…organic. I do very little plot planning although I do a hella lot of research. In fact, I have book not listed above that is stuck in perpetual research. Relic almost got locked into the research tango but I am wiser now. (stop giggling)

Nearly all of my projects start with a word or phrase. Best example is Butch Girls Can Do Anything was a celebratory song and dance Lorna and I did after we did something we thought impossible. Like, I rebuilt the carburetor of our main vehicle and…it started! We did our dance. The Soliloquy book titles are based on Shakespeares’ Hamlet (Act III, Scene I). It is the infamous “To be or not to be” speech which is called, ahem, The Soliloquy. However, I’m a redneck and I got the order wrong. “Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;/To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub”. I say my version is better because it is in friendly order. Who wants to sleep the sleep of death and dream the dream of death? Well, Hamlet apparently but not me. So there. (but each book includes an apology for getting it wrong)