Imaginary Lit

I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas is having (or has had, depending on time zones) a wonderful day. It's just past 11 a.m. here, so the day has just begun for me. This week has been so busy for me that I haven't even had time until now to say that No Safe Place is currently on sale in the US Kindle store for just 99 cents , so if you haven't yet gotten a copy for your ereader, or if you got a brand new tablet or Kindle for the holidays, or know someone who has, I can think of nothing better to add ;) Again, Merry Christmas if you're celebrating today, happy Hanukkah for those celebrating this week, and if I don't update tomorrow, happy Kwanzaa as well! Patreon | Ko-fi | PayPal

Here we are, mid-December, and we're just now getting our Christmas decorations up, lol. Spending Thanksgiving in Colorado sort of threw us off, time-wise, but hey, better late than never. Normally I wait until the very end of the year to make my "plans for the new year" post, but I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do, and I need to post something, so hey. The free promo for The Only One did so much better than I would've imagined. I'm still reeling over how great November was in terms of pages read, and though it's slacked off a bit, to my surprise, people are still reading it, and are starting to read my other books as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the promo for No Safe Place does over Christmas, with the three email promotions I've booked for it. The only downside to the TOO free promo is that I've only gotten one new review out of the several thousand people that downloaded it while it was free, and the s

Well, unfortunately I didn't win NaNo this year. I had time issues and trouble focusing, and I just couldn't quite get to 50,000 words, but I still got a lot done, a little over 38k, I believe. Becoming Family is obviously still happening, and I look forward to finishing it up and planning the release. More and more a solo trip to Destin for a week so I can write undisturbed looks appealing, but I just don't know if I can afford it. I'll have to keep checking prices on rentals... On the plus side, November was an amazing month for The Only One in terms of Kindle Unlimited reads. I had the most pages read of any month since I published it, which is still a little mind-blowing for me. It's begun to taper off, but I'm hopeful that the No Safe Place promo over Christmas will provide a little boost to all of my books. I hope everyone who celebrates had a good Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone's December is off to a good start!

Well, NaNo's been on for two weeks now, and I haven't had time to post about it on here until now. Unfortunately, things are going a little slower than I'd hoped, but I'm not giving up yet. I'm not to the halfway point yet, word count wise, but I'm trying to push through, and I'm hoping this week may be a little bit easier. I leave for Colorado a week from today, and I'm really hoping I'll be able to be a lot more productive while I'm out there. I've just posted another excerpt on Patreon , something else I've gotten behind on, what with being so busy and trying to squeeze in time to write when I can. There are now two there, and if you'd like to see that and the new one, and hopefully at least a couple more to come, be sure to become a subscriber at the $5 tier. In other book news, I've scheduled a promo for No Safe Place over Christmas, like I usually do, so keep an eye out for that, and be sure to spread the word to anyo

Happy Halloween! I don't usually do very much, and tonight's no exception (we don't typically get trick-or-treaters). Currently just watching Scream and hoping to maybe poke at Crimson Hollow Book 2 a little bit. Tomorrow, however, is November 1, which means the start of NaNoWriMo. I'm really excited to start working on Becoming Family , and I feel confident that I can get most of it written during NaNo, but I never like to make guarantees about that kind of stuff. (Mostly because I'm usually wrong, lol.) I'll post updates here throughout the month, and remember, if you want to see Patreon-exclusive excerpts, be sure to become a Patron at the $5 tier ! And good luck to all of you who are also doing NaNo this year.

The month is almost over, which means NaNo begins on Friday! I'm unbelievably excited to start working on Becoming Family . Remember, if you want exclusive sneak peeks during November that I won't be posting anywhere else , subscribe to my Patreon at the $5 tier . Be sure to check out the project page , and if you're doing NaNo this year, feel free to add me as a buddy! The free promotion of The Only One went rather well, with just over 5700 downloads. Thank you to everyone who downloaded it or borrowed it through Kindle Unlimited. If you like it, please leave a review on Amazon ! I may do a promotion of No Safe Place around Christmas, like I usually do, but I haven't decided yet (mostly because I need to be able to buy promos to make it worthwhile, and I need money for that, lol), but stay tuned on that front.

The Only One 's first free day went extremely well, with just over 3300 downloads! Today's been a bit slower, but still steady, with just over 700 downloads so far. Here's hoping some of these will lead to new reviews ;) As promised, here's another excerpt, this one a little bit steamier than yesterday's. If you haven't yet already downloaded your copy, hopefully this will entice you to do so ... ----- The brief ride to his building was silent and awkward, and Piper's stomach fluttered anxiously as she stared out the window. She kept feeling his gaze on her, and she took a shallow breath, wondering if she could actually follow through with her decision. When they arrived at his building, the driver popped the trunk, and Richard lifted his suitcases out, setting them on the sidewalk. He thanked the driver, and then bent to lift his suitcases, gently rebuking Piper when she tried to help. They headed up to his floor, and Piper hurried to unlock the d

I sort of forgot to do any actual preparation for it this weekend, lol, but The Only One is currently free in the Kindle store (including all international Amazon markets as well!). So far it's doing rather well, with some help from a Freebooksy promo that ran this morning, and I'm hoping it maintain some of the momentum over the week. If you have not yet read The Only One , head on over to Amazon and grab your free copy! And if you need some incentive, have a little excerpt featuring some flirting and mutual appreciation ;) I'll try to post a few more excerpts this week, so keep an eye out! "So, as you can see, the floor plan is completely open," Piper said as Richard stepped in behind her.  Richard nodded as he stared around. "Just like her flat in London, so I know she'll love that. And I think she'll really love the exposed brick too."  Piper nodded as well. "It's both sort of traditional and modern. Everything is updat

I've spent the last week naming the rest of my characters in Becoming Family , and also casting them because that's what I do, and now I'm finally done, so I thought I'd share the casting, and also a brand new summary. Natalie Rose thinks she's doing well enough with her life. She's got a good job and a decent apartment in New York City, and though life could be better, it could certainly be much worse.  When she discovers she's pregnant two months after a one-night stand, it's a considerable bump in the road. She knows nothing about the man she slept with beyond his first name - Nick - but she figures she can handle this well enough on her own, until she suddenly loses her job, and consequently, her apartment.  Desperate now, with no one to turn to, she takes what money she has left and leaves the city, heading north to a small town in upstate New York to find the father she's never met, a lawyer named Graham Elliot.  Graham is understanda

After taking a couple days to come up with a summary and agonizing over a temporary title I liked well enough to actually use, I'm finally ready to reveal my NaNo project for this year, and upcoming novel. (Title is almost certain to change, character names could also change, but the plot is what it is.) Becoming Family Life is unpredictable. Maggie Foster finds this out the hard way when she discovers she's pregnant after a one-night stand. She's unable to contact the man she slept with, not knowing anything about him besides his first name - Nick - but figures she can handle it well enough on her own. Until she loses her job. And then her apartment. Desperate, with no one else to turn to, she uses the money she has left to travel to a small town in upstate New York, in search of the father she's never met. Life is unpredictable. Graham Elliott is familiar with the concept, his own life having taken many strange turns over the years, but he's still

NaNoWriMo ( National Novel Writing Month , for those unaware) is fast approaching, and I've been pondering if I wanted to do it this year, and what I would write if I did. The first two years I did it, I won, and those fruitful months produced the first 50,000 words of The Only One in 2014, and then Crimson Hollow Book 1 in 2015. I tried it again last year for Crimson Hollow Book 2, but unfortunately did not hit the 50,000 word goal. This year, I figured I would try to do Crimson Hollow Book 2 again, but I've written it in bits and pieces already, and I'm afraid that it's too... broken up to try to get 50,000 words done in a month, so instead I'm doing something completely new, and something I haven't yet talked about on here, at least not in any kind of detail, even though it's an idea I've had for several years now. My hope is that it will go like The Only One did, which I was able to get done fairly fast and easy; it only took about six mon

Earlier today I had a bit of a realization: this year marks 20 years that I've been writing. I'm 33 now, so we're talking well over half my life. I've never shied away from talking about how I started out writing fanfiction, and when I started writing, it was during spring break of seventh grade. So March-ish of 1999. This was during the heyday of boy bands and the 90's pop craze, and I was, unashamedly, a Backstreet Boys girl. A friend of mine introduced me to the idea of fanfiction, and my little middle school brain just seized that and ran away with it. My first fandom was, of course, Backstreet Boys RPF (real person fic). It was all very cringey and not very good, but I kept at it, because it was fun (writing fanfiction was a lot more fun and rewarding back in those days, I will admit). The more I wrote, the better it got, and at some point in high school I shifted to writing AU (alternate universe) fic. It was still Backstreet Boys fic, but the guys were mo

This past Saturday, August 24, was the four year anniversary of the publication of The Only One . I meant to make a post, and then, in usual me fashion, totally forgot. (In my defense, that was the day my mom came back from Colorado and I was focused on cleaning up the house, lol.) But here I am now. The idea for the book (referred to as TOO for the rest of this post) came from one of my favorite Tumblr games, which was to have someone give you a handful of actors as your cast, you'd put your music on shuffle, and make up a fake movie based on the first song that came up. A friend gave me Dianna Agron, Darren Criss, and Billie Piper, and the song that came up was Jon McLaughlin's "Things That You Say" (title came from the line "tell me you're in love, I'm the only one, go on and lie to me with all the things that you say"). And in looking for the poster I made just now, I did not realize that TOO as an idea was as old as it was: I came up with i

I've been listening to my Lifehouse playlist on Spotify lately, and I'm on an album that gives me a lot of feelings about my first original writing project because it came out while I was knee-deep in that project, and it got me to wondering about how other authors relate music to their writing. I'm not much of an actual playlist person (all of my playlists on Spotify are literally just one playlist for each favorite artist with all of their albums so I can listen to them all back to back lol), I can't write to music with lyrics because I get too distracted by the lyrics, but I have a lot of songs that relate to my various original works. The entirety of Snow Patrol's Fallen Empires album is essentially the soundtrack for The Only One (the song "New York" especially) while "This Love" by Taylor Swift is what I would want Richard and Piper's theme to be if it were to ever become a movie. No Safe Place/Finding Home Again have songs from se

I haven't posted here since February. Oi. Sadly, I haven't done much writing since then either. I've been so focused on getting my client's book finished that my own writing has fallen by the wayside, and now I've gotten out of the habit. Fortunately, I think the end is very near on my client's book, and I'm hoping to get back to working on Crimson Hollow full force here soon. I'll have two weeks to myself in mid-October, and I'm really hoping the time alone could prove to be productive. I'll also be traveling to Colorado again over Thanksgiving, and driving back home with my mom, and maybe that time will also be fruitful, especially if I can find my flow again before then. I keep forgetting to do a sale on The Only One , and I also keep forgetting that I want to publish a little novella in the No Safe Place/Finding Home Again 'verse. Maybe my memory will return to me soon too, lol. My carpal tunnel has been bad in my arms and hands l

There's not much happening over here, writing-wise, unfortunately. I'm still entrenched in a book I'm helping one of my clients publish, and it's severely cut into my own writing time. I'm ready to be done with it so I can get back to my own stuff, but I think the end is still a ways away. On the bright side, No Safe Place will be on sale next month! I wanted to do a sale in January, but the money didn't quite work out for buying promos, but my tax refund should be depositing this week, so I'll be able to submit for a few promos. The sale will run March 9 through March 16 (coinciding with the dates Hannah was missing in the book), so mark your calendars and tell your friends! I also meant to do a sale on The Only One for Valentine's Day, but I've been busy with work and other things and it just completely slipped my mind to try to plan it, but I'm going to try to schedule one, maybe for April (perhaps for my birthday, who knows). Speakin