Cover Reveal - Affairs of the Dead

There are only two more days until Affairs of the Dead is released, so I'm happy to whet your appetites with the cover, and I'll throw in the first page just for fun. I'm very happy with the cover, so here it is:

Chapter One

I was in a strip club trying to help a ghost get laid, which was challenging but not impossible. It was just extremely taxing on the necromancer extraordinaire (me) who had to channel energy into the ghost to make her corporeal enough to entice one of the stripper boys. Technically what I was doing was illegal, but it was my job to help ghosts settle their affairs so they could move on to eternally ever after, and Julia’s unfinished business was that she’d died a virgin. I’d made it as easy as I could for her by starting at a strip club; if she couldn’t get some here, I wasn’t sure how much lower I could scrape the barrel.

Julia’s prolonged virginity was an enigma to me, even though she told me that she’d been waiting for her soul mate. I just didn’t understand why that meant she couldn’t hit up a bar; get drunk; and have a fun, regret-filled weekend that included the walk of shame. At least she’d have been in better shape once Soul Mate came around.

Affairs of the Dead - Nine days til release! + Blog Tour Info

My excitement is growing because my debut novel, Affairs of the Dead, is set to come out on April 19th, that's only ten days away now! I've seen my cover draft and am happy with it, and I hope to be able to reveal it soon. Meanwhile, starting tomorrow, I will be guest blogging on a few blogs over the next few weeks, here's the schedule:

April 11th - Anne Lange
April 17th - Ally Shields
April 24th - Marie Carhart
April 24th - Niecey Roy
April 29th - Fel Wetzig
May 3rd - Shehanne Moore
May 8th - Marie Hall
May 14th - Antonia Vanzandt

I hope you will all follow along with my tour. And if anyone would like to host me on their blog or do a blast post for Affairs once it's released, feel free to contact me!

Finding time to make time

I'm feeling a bit reflective today. I've been thinking lately about being able to find time to fit everything I want to do into my life. I have to admit I am not always the best with time management, sometimes I am superb with it and other times I just laze out. There is never a lack of things for me to do, but sometimes I find myself cycling through all the things I can do to occupy my time only to end up doing nothing at all. Then days and weeks pass by and I start to feel most unproductive. The easy thing to do is complain about it, the hard thing to do is change it.

I haven't been blogging much or very active on social media, and I definitely have not been writing. Sometimes I struggle with that, but I know myself well enough to know that sometimes that's just how it has to be and eventually that spark will come back to me. This year has been a real whirlwind in my personal life, in mostly good ways, so I've been telling myself that real life has been keeping me too busy for my imaginary life, meaning my stories. But that's no excuse and really what I have to do is get myself together and carve out time for everything. I'm the type of person that wants it all, but I can't have it all if I don't make room for everything, right? I've given up on a lot of things in the past, and I've stopped trying when I should have kept going, but for where I am right now I am going to actively try to do things differently. I will find time to make time!

That being said, next week I will be blogging about my upcoming book release later this month. There will be a cover release to share and I will also be giving details about my blog tour. So stayed tuned!

My So-Called Teenage Life Blog Hop

This sounded like a fun blog hop to take part in, hosted by Andrea, Christa, and Amy, even though a lot of things I wrote during my teenage years I would never want to see the light of day! I started keeping a poetry journal my sophomore year of high school, so there's quite a log of terrible poetry for me to choose from. And for every ten cringe worthy pieces, there's one passable piece, like the following, written when I was about fifteen:

Porcelain Doll

Eyes that never see,
lips that never smile,
never will you dream,
or ever learn to cry,
for you are just a porcelain doll,
your arms stretch out
but you embrace no warmth at all.

Always you stand in beauty for my sake,
lest one day the wind blows
and my ivory doll breaks.

Then you will only have
a scattered existence,
my porcelain doll,
the only one I've ever known
to live and die
and not cry at all.


Well, that was a fun trip down memory lane!

Indie-kissing Blogfest

For this blogfest, hosting by The Indelibles, I'm posting a kissing scene from Affairs of the Dead. I think I've shared this before, but I haven't reached any kissing in my WIP yet so this will have to do!

Selene and Micah kiss:

His hand around mine was strong, and the strength was very appealing. Where Andrew’s touch carried a crushing strength, Micah’s seemed more like a supporting strength.

“Then I guess I’m not going to help matters by doing this…” Micah moved forward, slipped his hand around my neck, and kissed me.

I was shocked for only a split second before my body rippled in pleasure from the feel of his lips on mine, and I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the kiss. Micah pulled me closer, careful of my slung arm, and deepened the kiss. His tongue whispered across my lips like he was asking rather than demanding, and I found this thrilling.

I opened my mouth, and when our tongues brushed, his hands slid up my back under my shirt. He groaned low in his throat and cupped my face, sliding his fingers through my hair. I arched my head back as he planted whisper soft kisses down my neck that literally made my toes curl. He moved his mouth back to mine and kissed me slow and deep, as though he was taking his time to explore the contours of my mouth. It was a novelty to me after months of having my mouth roughly savaged by Andrew, along with my body.

I had thought the way things were with Andrew had been the perfect scenario, but now I realized I had just never been kissed like this before—like the person on the other end of the kiss was it in for more than just the pleasure it brought him. There was a strength and intensity in the way Micah held me, possessively, but not like he thought he owned me, more like he was afraid I would slip away from him. 

The Unfinished Words

As I chug through my WIP, I started thinking about my writing process and how it changes depending on the book, and what affects whether I finish something or not. Last year I wrote three books and I wrote them all with record speed. This WIP has been much slower, and I always find myself thinking that when I get past a certain number of words the novel has a good chance of being finished. With this project I'm past 25k and am still invested in the story even if I'm not writing lightening fast, but that also doesn't mean this will be a novel I finish. Last year I started writing a PNR that I was really excited about, but it remains unfinished around 21k, and I had thought I passed the point where I was more likely to finish it than not.

Maybe I have writer ADD, maybe all writers do. I have quite a few projects that are unfinished (as I'm sure all writers do), and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I think it's to be expected actually. It's normal to get fired up about something only to lose steam later on, just as it's normal to get fired up about something and see it to the end. I think the real problem would be if I didn't finish anything at all. And I realized that this isn't only restricted to my writing; I have books I stopped reading, video games I haven't completed, as well as drawings and paintings waiting to be done. But that's just how it goes sometimes, especially with creative people I think. For me, my attention is always being pulled in different directions on a whim, and sometimes I get tired of one thing and just want to try something new. And I think there can be beauty in the unfinished; the possibility will always be there, and sometimes that's nice to wonder about. And who knows, maybe the spark for some of those unfinished things will come back and they'll find their ending. Or their purpose could have just been a jumping point to launch me into something else.

So, I don't find myself disappointed with my unfinished projects, at least the possibility of them will always be there for a rainy day.

This and That

I've sort of dropped the ball with blogging in the new year, I've had a lot going on, in just about every aspect of my life, and didn't have much heart for blogging. Hoping that will change, I'm going to actively remind myself that I have a blog and find things to blog about damn it! Anyway, here's a little update on my writing life.

I spent January working on editing Affairs of the Dead. I still don't have a release date for it yet, but I'm fairly certain it will come on in the spring, which I am of course excited about. Working with my editor was pretty painless, thankfully, and I think the book is being whipped into even better shape. I sent it back a couple days ago and can't wait until we have a final product. In the meantime I think I will sink my teeth back into the YA project I started in December but put on the back burner to work on Affairs. This one won't be one of my knock out in ten days books however, definitely more along the lines of slow and steady, but I'm itching to write, and excited to be working on a YA novel after so many adult Urban Fantasies. I'm having a  lot of fun with it.

Oh, and I also created an author page for Affairs of the Dead, would love for you all to check it out and add it to your TBR list, I promise it's awesome =)

Goodreads Author Page