Imaginary Lit

Well, it's New Year's Eve. I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday, whatever you celebrate. I had a nice Christmas in Colorado with my family, and didn't particularly want to come home, and not just because the highs here in Florida are currently in the 70's. 2018 didn't feel like a very productive year for me. I finished Crimson Hollow Book 1, got my rights back on No Safe Place , and had a fairly successful sale on Finding Home Again over Christmas, but apart from that, this year was just a little lacking. I'm hopeful that 2019 will be better. I want to try to get better about promoting my books, now that they're all under my control again, and I'm hoping that I can finish Crimson Hollow Book 2 and start working on Book 3. I also want to get the No Safe Place / Finding Home Again wedding short published sometime early in the year. I had a dream last night that quickly morphed into a new book idea when I woke up, so maybe it's a good omen

Today's the day! Finding Home Again is now on sale for 99 cents through December 27 . Buy one for yourself if you haven't already, and then buy some for your friends and family ;)

Well, I didn't win NaNo this year. November was weirdly busy and I had a lot of trouble focusing on writing (or on anything, really, as it took this long for me to even make this post...). I did get about 21k written in Crimson Hollow Book 2, so I at least did something, just not as much as I'd wanted. Finding Home Again goes on sale this week, and I'm excited about it. I've booked a handful of promos, and I'm hoping they pay off. And a little additional treat for those of you who are fans of Hannah and Eli from No Safe Place and Finding Home Again , I'm planning to release a wedding short story some time early next year, so stay tuned for updates on that! As always, Patreon subscribers get first peeks at excerpts and cover reveals, so consider becoming a Patron ; $1 a month gets you access to cover reveals, and $5 gets you excerpts. I'm going to Colorado over Christmas to spend time with family, and I'm hoping maybe I'll be a little inspire

The new version of No Safe Place is now up on Amazon ! It'll be 99 cents for the next week or so, and then will go to regular price, so get it cheap while you can!

In light of being able to republish No Safe Place soon, I figured it was a good time to show off the new cover before it's up on Amazon. Thanks again to the wonderful Agata at Bukovero . I went to her with no clear idea of what I even wanted, and she came up with this beautiful cover that's just perfect for the book. I'll definitely be using her again, and I highly recommend her. Anyway, without further ado, here's the shiny new cover for No Safe Place ! I've already changed the paper back cover on Amazon, and the Kindle Version will hopefully be up soon as well. I'll definitely post a link as soon as it's available!

Small updates, but updates nonetheless. I have finally received my rights back from Amazon for No Safe Place , but it's not effective until December, which puts a bit of a crimp in my planned Christmas promotion, as I can't run a Kindle Countdown Deal on it until it's been up for 30 days. However, I am still doing a Christmas promo, just on a different book:  Finding Home Again will be on sale from December 20 through December 27! I've booked a few promos, a couple through tried and true sites, and one through a new one that I decided to test out, so we'll see how it goes. I'm planning to place No Safe Place at 99 cents for the first few days, for those that might want to buy it again for the new cover and minor text changes (which I still have to finish, but NaNo...), and then I'll probably do a Kindle Countdown Deal on that in January. The Only One will likely get its own KCD around Valentine's Day. I'm trying to make 2019 the year of be

Well, it's November. Where does the time go... NaNoWriMo has begun, and I'm off to a bit of a slow start, but I'm hoping I can pick up the pace soon. It's been a couple of months since I wrote anything, I have to get back into the habit. In other book news, I've requested my rights back from Amazon for No Safe Place , and once I get them, I'll be republishing the book on KDP with a few small text changes, and a brand new cover! I'm keeping the cover under wraps for right now, until I'm ready to republish, but if you want to see it before then, all you need to do is become a Patron for just $1 a month. Just one dollar gives you access to cover reveals before anybody else gets to see them! Seems like a pretty good deal to me XD Once No Safe Place is fully under my control, I'll be doing a couple of sales, so keep an eye out for those, and I'm hopeful that next year, I can start doing regular promotions on all of my books. If you're pa

So, I posted this on Patreon a while back, and figured it was time to share it here as well. I, like many authors, like to cast my characters. I find it provides a nice template for describing how they look, and it's always fun to imagine my books being turned into movies or TV shows with my dream cast. So, as a little sneak peek, I thought I would share the cast and character names for Book 1. Elric/Alex - Lee Pace Eveline - Hayley Atwell Marcus - Mehcad Brooks Parker - Zac Efron Lily - Arden Cho Ian - Tom Ellis Senara - Aja Naomi King Marina - Lana Condor Pearl - Sabrina Carpenter Adelaide - Jenna Coleman Delilah - Lily Collins Arabella - Nicole Beharie Rosalind - Gugu Mbatha-Raw Kahina - Uzo Aduba Godric - Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Arthur - Daniel Radcliffe Petronella - Emily Baldoni Elisabet - Helena Mattsson Robert - Gary Oldman I've also decided to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, working on Crimson Hollow Book 2! You can read the summary

Not too much going on here. Still taking a bit of a writing break, but I'm hoping to dive in to Crimson Hollow Book 2 soon. In the meantime, I've been having a bit of a craving for historical drama (perhaps all the flashbacks in Book 1?), so I've just finished watching The Tudors, and I'm about to start Game of Thrones (which, yes, I know isn't historical, but it's got the vibe I want). There is a little bit of book news to report, however. After having her website bookmarked for probably over a year by now, I've finally commissioned Agata over at Bukovero to make a new cover for No Safe Place . I've been admiring her covers for a while, and finally decided to bite the bullet. I'm hoping to use her for the Crimson Hollow series covers when the time comes, but I figure it's best to start small and work my way up. (Also, I can barely afford one cover right now, it'll be some time before I can afford a whole series XD) I'm so exci

I finally finished Book 1 of the Crimson Hollow series and sent it off to my "editors," yay! Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't mean a whole lot, since I still have three books and two novellas left to write, but considering I didn't think I'd finish Book 1 until the end of the year, I'm counting it as a win. Fortunately, Book 2 is already started, and I'm hoping to dive into that soon. I'll probably take a small break, as I usually do after I finish writing something big, and I've also got a fairly substantial editing gig that I'll hopefully be able to get started on soon-ish. I'm hoping to take the money from this editing project and put it towards getting a new cover for No Safe Place (and possibly Finding Home Again , depending), and doing a bit of a relaunch of the book. In non-writing news, I'm going to see Taylor Swift in Tampa on August 14, which I'm super excited about. I'm also staying that We

There's a misconception about published authors that continues to linger, that once a writer is published, they've made it; they must be rolling in money. It's a very weird misconception to me, but I can kind of understand it, since there's a lot of mystery surrounding books and what goes into publishing them. Some authors make it big. They're the names you hear all the time: Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, just to name a very small few, but they're the exception to the rule. As much as a lot of us would like to, we can't yet quit our day jobs to write full time. I had someone send me a message once, saying they were intimidated by me because I had a book published, and I sat there like, ...what? For me, publishing a book was no different than posting a piece of fanfiction online; it just took a little more time and effort, and a small amount of money, and I was charging for it. I have three books out now, and I'm certainly not rolling

Hey, all, this is just a little idea that popped into my head earlier this week. Considering it's going to be some time before I have anything substantial to share with regard to Crimson Hollow , I thought I'd post this here! I hope you all like it, and who knows, maybe I'll come up with more things like this to share. (Some may only be available to my subscribers on Patreon, so consider clicking the link at the bottom of this post and becoming a Patron!) ***** The dirt is cool and soft under her hands as she digs her fingers into the soil, releasing a delightfully earthy aroma. They tell her she ought to wear gloves for this – they usually tell her that a lady shouldn’t do things like this at all – but she likes the feel of the dirt, likes being on her knees in her garden as she tends to her roses. They – the society ladies, the gentlemen callers, the old women at church with their black lace gloves who sneer when they see dirt lingering under her nails – tell her

So, as you may or may not remember, I was planning a research trip to Virginia for Crimson Hollow purposes. Well, I went last week, and got home Saturday, and I'm definitely glad I went. We stayed in Newport News, as it was sort of centrally located to a lot of the places I wanted to visit. Sunday we ended up checking out Endview Plantation (it was set during the Civil War era, which is later than the time in my flashbacks, but it was still very useful for me) and Rosewell Plantation (which is actually a ruin, so that was kind of cool). Monday we went to Smithfield, largely known for its ham (though we skipped the meat processing plant...), but also with a very neat historical area that has now become the model for Barstow, the fictional town in the series. Tuesday was spent at Historic Jamestowne, and this was probably my favorite place we went to. There's very little I can find online regarding American history, specifically history in this part of Virginia, before the

As some of you may or may not know, Amazon has decided to end the Kindle Scout program. I will admit, I'm a little saddened by this, because I'd hoped to submit the first Crimson Hollow book to Scout, but I also realistically knew that by the time the first book was ready, it was unlikely Scout would still be around; I just didn't expect it to end this soon. Kindle Press is still around, though, and many Scout-chosen books are still with the imprint, mine included (though I still owe a little less than half my advance, so I don't really have a choice). I hope that maybe with a shift in priorities, Kindle Press will start doing more to promote the titles it has, including No Safe Place , but it's still too soon to say. I am, of course, still plugging away on Crimson Hollow . Books One and Two are in various stages of progress, and though I'm not writing nearly as much as I would like, progress is still progress. My trip to Virginia is coming up in just und

If you were to Google, say, "writing tips" or "writing advice," you would be met with a long list of results. Some of it may be structured as guidelines, and some of it may actually be listed as rules. Some of it is good advice, but a lot of it is subjective stuff that won't work for everyone. Stephen King, from whom I borrowed the title for this post, has a lot of great writing advice, some of which I've taken to heart, and some of which I've ignored completely. Finish your manuscript and then shove it in a drawer (either literally or figuratively speaking)? Yes, absolutely. Writing every day? Ehhhh, not so much. The thing about writing is that you have to do what works best for you, and what works best for you may not be what the "professionals" say is right, and that's okay. I'm gonna talk about what works for me, and if it doesn't work for you, hey, that's fine. You do you. So, on the whole "writing every day"

Diversity is not just a buzz word. In a world that is a melting pot of races, genders, sexualities, and religions, it should be the norm that all of these different kinds of people are represented in major media. But... they're not. Movies, television, and books are still predominantly made up of and catered to white, straight men, and if anyone tries to step away from that and have non-white, non-straight, non-male characters, suddenly there's a cry of "everything is so political these days!" Y'all. People are not political statements. Everybody deserves to see themselves represented in the media they consume. I'm a white, bisexual woman, and quite frankly, I'm tired of seeing white people, mostly white men, in all of the media I consume. I loved the Ghostbusters remake that came out in 2016, and I'm still angry and bitter, to this day, about what was done to this movie, and how its franchise chances were ruined because of a bunch of whiny white

Well, this year didn't start off with quite the bang I'd anticipated. The new job I started ended up taking a huge toll on my health, both mental and physical, so I ended up quitting ("limping" in the title of the post isn't just a metaphor...). I've been evaluating what kind of job would make me happy, and have set my sights on working from home. This is likely the dream for everyone, but I think in terms of my mental health especially, this is what will work best for me. I still have a part-time job, but I'm looking to add freelance proofreading and editing on the side. To that end, I've finally set up a seller account on Fiverr, and have posted a gig for proofreading and editing . The packages I'm offering go up to 20,000 words, but I am taking custom orders, so if you have something you want me to proofread and/or edit that's over 20,000 words, feel free to contact me and we'll work something out. If you would like to support me fin