Category: New Story

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day job

I work for an ad tech company for my day job. I write technical content for the help center and manage language on our UI among other things.

As part of a product refresh we are doing, they are offering us the opportunity to run ads of our own, on anything at all, so I’ve started up an ad campaign for The Blood Witch Saga!

So you may start to see ads pop up around the internet if you are in the US and have expressed (through your web traffic) that you are into books and such.

Exciting times.

I’ve also started a new writing project that is a bit different for me. Still urban-ish fantasy, kinda dystopian, with dragons and gremlins and other fantastic creatures. I’m really having fun with it.

Anyway, once again I’m up way too early in the morning, poking about the internet. I’m about to go hit up Threads with my normal daily posts: today that includes a poetry post, along with my #Serious Question of the Day and my Something to know about me post. You should come hang out there! As social media goes, it’s currently my favorite place to interact.

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daughters of morru

While digging through the depths of unfinished WIPs in my cloud drive, I came across the YA novel I had started a few years back and always meant to get back to, The Daughters of Morru. I had been looking for content I could use to tempt more patrons over on Patreon.

The Daughters of Morru is a fantasy story staring Alliafred Donovon, a middle daughter of a noble family in the country Kannith-Lee, who has dreams of escaping her soft prison in favor of the hard life of a warrior dedicated to the goddess Morru.

The first chapter is available over on my Patreon page for all to see! I will be posting chapters every Sunday for all patrons at the $5/month level and up. For just $1/month, you’ll gain access to my daily poem a full week before the rest of the world sees it.

Don’t want to commit to a donation each month? Hit me up over on Ko-Fi, where you can do one-time donations as well as monthly donations. You’ll get the daily poems for just a one-time donation, and I’m cooking up a story to serialize over there too.

I sometimes share my photography on both sites as well. Come over and join me!

Photo by Tim Rebkavets on Unsplash

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the return of the day job x 2

It’s Friday. It’s the first Friday in a long time that I’ve spent an entire week working on paying work. I mean, yeah sure, eventually, hopefully, all the work I’ve put into my writing lately will pay off, but this is the immediate…or close to immediate, paycheck kind of work.

Did I mention that I started TWO full time jobs on Monday, or close to full time for the one. Job #1 is with a BI software company where I get to dig into my data analysis background and learn new things. Job #2 is straight up editing work. Granted, it’s editing work for a big company on a big project where the end client is a state government, so think dry and unexciting reading.

I ended up keeping both, even though Job #2 is a contract job through a contracting agency because neither one of them pays me what I’m used to…by a pretty significant amount. I fully anticipate that Job #1 will be my permanent job, and that the pay will increase as we move out of the current economic situation.

I’m really enjoying learning how to use new tools and combine my experience with new things, and at the end of that long day I can unplug my learning brain and edit for hours.

Means not much else is getting done, though my muse Brain is nibbling on something new, based on a dream a friend of mine had. She has the three main characters and the set up, some back story, but there’s a lot of world building to do, and a chunk of research, but she DOES love a good world build!

Just finishing up my first cup of coffee and getting ready to get onto Job #1. So, if I’m a bit scarce for the next little while, forgive me! I promise I’ll be around. Happy Weekend, Readers!

Cover Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

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there will be blood

National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWrMo.  I’m pretty sure every writer I know has done it at least once.  I’ve played a few times, but never found it super productive, and so I haven’t done it in a few years.

However, a number of my Sirens sisters are doing Nano this year, and I’m hot on working on the Blood Witch novel, so I figured it would be a good way to enhance my focus to finish my zero draft by the end of the month.

If you are interested in being buddies on NaNo, I’m NatalieJCase over there.

I’m usually better writing under deadline, rather than being left to my own pace.  I tend to dawdle and procrastinate!

I’m also giving Scrivener another trial.  So far I’m meh on it, but as I build up some of the notes and such I may like it better.  I just started chapter eleven this morning!

I had forgotten how much I loved these characters.  I hope you will love them too!

With that note, I am off for more coffee and to get this work day started.  Be safe and be kind, Readers!

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nebulous nebulas and other space oddities…

I’m not going to lie, this new job is killing me.  I haven’t written more than a few words (of course, not on any of the things I have been writing, no, Brain decided that we needed more sci-fi in our writing and has offered me space!vampire!pirates…I don’t know sometimes…) and my stress level is mighty.

Still, I have a week’s vacation looming, it’s starting to feel like fall, and this time next week I’ll be somewhere in LA.  Our Wednesday isn’t fully decided, but Tuesday we’ll be at Universal Studios Hollywood, and Thursday and Friday we’ll be at Disney.  This is the second year in a row that I’ll be at a Disney property for/around my birthday.  A year ago today, I was on a plane for Paris.

I do love to travel and I am very fortunate to make enough money to support it.  I wish that money was coming from book sales, but I’ll get there one day.  In the meantime, I’ll just write when I can and keep plugging along.

I really should get to the day-job work.  I have my coffee, I’ve had breakfast, and once I get through today, it’s only two more until vacation.  Happy Wednesday, Readers.  I hope it is kind and filled with love.

 

Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash

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combat boots and tutus

It’s little secret that my muse, whom I lovingly call Brain, has been out on walkabout since I lost my job.  Between the stress of job hunting and the stress of Pride, she couldn’t handle the pressure and took off.  It happens.  Muses are fragile creatures, after all.

There have been signs of her return, however.  A small plot fix here, a bit of dialog there.  Then there came the deluge.

It was yesterday, when I was meant to be working on an edit, and suddenly there was Brain, rattling off ideas at a hundred miles per hour, scribbling notes and shoving them at me, stamping her combat booted feet to get my attention.

It would be nice if she could focus on the stories we already have in progress, but I’ll take words of any sort after this drought.  She seems to have picked up a half an idea for a story that we started ages ago and has been busily world-building around the idea since her return.  I have about a thousand words hastily written to try to contain it.

Meanwhile, Brain is dancing through my brain in her combat boots and purple tutu, swinging her strand of cheap psuedo-pearls, painting word pictures for me to capture and put on paper.

It’s good to have her home.  And yes, I realize I am a little bit on the crazy side of normal.

Photo by Marjorie Bertrand on Unsplash

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words, words and more words

I’ve written a lot of words this week, though almost none of them have been on any of my current writing projects.  No, I’ve written exercises for job interviews and I’ve written thank you emails.  I’ve written instructions for Pride training sessions and I’ve written a lot of emails to do with Pride or job hunting.

I’m hoping today I get to focus a little on one of the novels currently in progress, or maybe the short story I started last week.  I have lots of ideas for fleshing out characters that are currently sort of cardboard cut outs waiting to be dressed in backstory.  The book I’m furthest along with needs some work on the culture and religions of the world, and some dressing up in the descriptions of people, places and things.

The short story I started is tentatively titled “The Accidental Assassin” and begins with a young woman killing a man who attacked her.  Ultimately it’s the story of a woman refusing to be a victim and embracing what she is good at, even if that puts her on the outer fringes of society.

So I’m dedicating this weekend to words.  All the words.  Words all over the place.

Hopefully before the weekend is over I’ll have actually accomplished making some of them good.

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so many irons in the fire

This time of year is my busy season.  Being out of work hasn’t eased any of it, in fact, in a lot of ways it’s made it harder, busier.  Looking for work is a full time job, as they say.  Add in the work I do for SF Pride, and some freelance editing, not to mention my own writing and you get one busy little author!

I have an interview today for a job I’d really like to get at a company in San Francisco that is working to change the landscape of finance for those who are un-banked or under-banked.  It’s a wonderful combination of work that I love and a cause I can get behind.

Yesterday, I spent most of my day working on Pride stuff…paperwork that all needs updating to 2019, contracts and acceptance letters…all kinds of fun stuff, then I cut out about two hours of my afternoon to read, an indulgence to be sure.

I recently won a leather bound edition of The Song of Ice and Fire, and have paused in my Sirens reading to start reading these.  I’m not quite two thirds of the way through the first book.  I’m interested to find how the books differ from the TV show.

I’m up early this morning, and hope to work on a short story that I’m writing before I have to start getting ready for the interview.  It’s a sci-fi piece about a girl who accidentally becomes an assassin, first out of necessity, but then discovering that she is good at it.

Right then, I should get to those words, and my coffee while it’s still hot.

 

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

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books, reading and inspiration

A few years back, a friend who is also an author, turned me on to a conference that takes place in Colorado in October. It isn’t a writing convention, but a lot of the people there are authors.  It isn’t a readers convention, though everyone there are readers.

I couldn’t go last year because I chose Italy (and do not regret that decision), but I’m all signed up for this year.

One of the things I love about Sirens, is that on top of all of the conversations, panels, and learning experiences, they provide you a reading list, filled with books written by strong women authors in genres where women are often overlooked.  It is a huge list of speculative fiction that hits multiple genres and sometimes mixes them together.

This year’s theme is Heroes, and the guests of Honor, on top of being kickass authors with heroes in their books, they are diverse and the words they offer bring you to new places.  I started at the top of the list and bought the first three books from our Guests of Honor.

The first one I read was The Bloodprint.  Bloodprint

A fantasy set in a world where religious extremists have taken over and twisted their holy text to keep women out of sight, with no voice or presence, and keeping the men in line with fear.  It’s easy to see the parallels to our own world.  The hero, in this case, is a woman who knows how to use the scripture of that religion to perform magic.  Her journey takes her far from home in search of a legend in hopes of freeing her world.

I loved how different this world was from the familiar fantasy story.

 

 

Trail of Lightning

 

Trail of Lightning was the second book I read, and I devoured it in a single day.

This falls into post-apocalyptic and dystopian type categories, and our hero is a Diné, a monster-slayer with a dark past and powers that burst out of her, giving her speed and the ability to kill.  The world is filled with old gods and monsters, and she needs to come to terms with her past before she can survive to see the future.

This book sucked me in and held me through the end and at the end, I really, really wanted more.  I have already ordered the next book.

 

I love books like these, that fill my head with ideas, that make me think and rethink.  Inspiration struck me yesterday and I spilled over 2000 words on a short story before 5am yesterday after finishing this book the night before.

Want to join me on this reading challenge?  Grab some books and get reading!  Better yet, want to join me at Sirens?  Denver, October.  Dive in.  You won’t regret it.

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Gram’s Town

Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve had a love of horror novels.  I found a John Saul book at a garage sale when I was around 14, and having already cut my teeth on Steven King’s Salem’s Lot and Carrie, I was hungry for more.

That book was Comes the Blind Fury.

comes the blind fury

I’m not a huge fan of most horror movies, mostly because it’s the psychological horror that pulls me in, not none stop blood with no real story to induce the fear response.  But books?  Yes please.

It should come as no surprise then that I have had my own horror story floating about in the darker recesses of my brain since about the time I was 17.  It has never really made it to the page, because I had trouble finding my voice.

However, recently I wondered if I could condense it into a short story for an upcoming anthology, and words started to pour out.

Yes, this makes three novels currently in some stage of creation on my computer.  This is me, after all.

I doubt it will be short enough for the anthology, now that I’ve gotten into it, but that’s okay.  It’s fun to be writing something very different from my usual.  The constant rain here is very atmospheric as well.

Speaking of rain, I had to wade through rivers of run off to get into the office this morning, and I should probably dive into the ever present, ever growing pile of work.

Happy Wednesday, Readers!  I hope you find yourself someplace sunny and warm, with kindness as your companion.