I almost forgot to post about it. It's a polyamorous romance about a human witch, a crow-human shifter, his adopted dragonling daughter, and the dragonling's uncle who knows a young dragon should be raised by dragons and among dragons. And how to resolve this dilemma.

I'm particularly delighted by this book because: 

• The characters are skilled in their own areas of expertise, but not extraordinarily powerful, either politically or personally
• The story's conflicts are nonviolent and personal, not world-saving

I love these aspects in fantasy but I hardly ever use them in my own writing. But I did it here! Yay!

~

Unrelated: I've been playing/using 4thewords.com, a writing gamification site, since 2016. This year. they've kicked NaNoWriMo to the curb like everyone else (some reasons to stop using NaNoWriMo here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae33g5/writing_discords_forums_and_a_decades_worth_of/ ). Instead, they're doing a 44-day-long event: "Weathercraft Terrarium". It runs for 44 days, starting today. 

They have word-count quests for the event, with lengths varying from 5000 words up to 250,000. The word count quests are timed, with the timer starting on the day you take them. So you can take them any time before the event ends, and you'll have until 44 days after that to finish them, rather than the timer running the exact length of the event on the site.

I took them all. Including the 250,000 word one.

Writing 250k in 44 days means an average of 5682 words per day.

My highest one-day word count for fiction is 6070, on November 1, 2021. My second-highest is 5781, on November 2, 2023. Other than those two days, I've never written as much as 5682 in one day.

...yeah I don't think this goal is realistic for me. :D

To make it sort of remotely achievable, I am reconsidering what I count as "words written" for this event. Traditionally, I only count:

• Fiction
• On the current project for the month (meaning "sometimes split across two stories, but only if I finished one novel and started a different one in the month")
• Words added to the total document count at the end of the day

But this isn't a novel-writing event; I can count whatever I want. So I'm counting:

• Words written. 
• yeah that's it, literally any word written counts.
• also I can give myself illustration credit (I'm gonna hold this in reserve for the end; I want to do the challenge with words if possible, but I'm willing to count this).

That means I'm counting this post. And I'm not just counting the total for the post: I'm writing this in 4thewords, and 4thewords counts everything I type. Even if I delete it five seconds later. I often rearrange words while I'm writing, a process so instinctive I don't count it as editing. As of this moment, this post is at 331 words, but my "words written" for the post is 399. (4thewords does this automatically when I use 4thewords to write; I would absolutely not try to manually include deleted words. o_o;;)

Even counting deleted words, blog posts, toots, Discord comments, etc., I don't think 250k is realistic for me. For one thing, I don't think my wrists can take it. Maybe I'll try transcription software. It's pretty good these days, but I've never used it because my speech is so disorganized compared to my writing. But maybe there's something that will let me edit the text as I dictate it, and which would be easier on my wrists than typing everything without being such incoherent word vomit that I have no use for it.

One reason I'm interested in "writing whatever" is that my focus on "write fiction" is sometimes counterproductive. It helps to just start typing, even if the words I write have no long-term purpose. Beyond that, I like having a record of my days, so blog posts are constructive for me and I don't write them often enough. I feel like writing, say, 50% fiction and 50% blather, would be an unconstructively high level of blather. But I'm curious to see how it works, and also I can just stop if it's not working.

In any case, I have no intention of spending 44 days writing blog posts. I'm mostly interested in writing fiction. I plan to finish my Apothecaria playthrough (finally) and start a new novel. The working title is "Be That Way", and the elevator pitch is "A werewolf, a catgirl and a goblin walk into a coffee shop. Now with 200% more lesbians!" It is as lighthearted as it sounds. Very rom-com. It's in the same setting as A Dragonling's Family, but with new protagonists. There'll be some cameos from the protagonists of Dragonling. When I finish that (yes I plan to start and finish it in 44 days, I think this is completely reasonable. I've even done it before! Once: I drafted The Moon Etherium in 38 days), I'll work on "Koysko and the Witch" (also a working title). I don't have finished outlines for either of these, but "Be That Way" is in pretty good shape, just needs some more work on the resolution and a bit more fleshing out. 

To put this in bullet-point format

Goals

• Complete outline for "Be That Way"
• Write 50k of "Be That Way" in November 

Stretch Goals

• Finish writing my Apothecaria journal
• Finish illustrating same
• Finish writing "Be That Way"
• Complete outline for another book (this will probably be "Koysko and the Witch" but if I decide something else is easier, I'm fine with that)
• Start writing that book
• Write 250k words total, counting literally everything
• Occasionally remember things other than writing exist

It’s here! Demon’s Alliance, book three of The Demon’s Series, is now available! \o/ If you haven't already, you can also get book one, Demon's Lure, and book two, Angel's Sigil.

One thing that frustrates me about releasing a new book in a series is that the blurb for the new book generally contains spoilers for earlier books in the series. The blurb for Golden Coils gives away major plot points for Silver Scales. Likewise, the blurb for The Sun Etherium gives away one of the twists of The Moon Etherium.

When I’m promoting a new book in a series, I want to reach two audiences: existing readers who need to know the new book is available, and new readers who don’t know about the series but would be interested in it. It’s great to reach the latter! But it feels off to reach them with “also, here’s some big revelations on the resolution of those books you didn’t read yet.”

To address this, I have written DECOY BOOK BLURBS, to conceal the spoilers of the actual book blurb! Anyone who remembers the first two books will recognize the real book blurb because it’ll be the one consistent with prior books*. But the decoys will serve to disguise it from potential new readers who want to avoid spoilers! (New readers start here: Demon's Lure)

*Or you can click through to the “buy” page linked above. I didn’t put the decoy book blurbs there.

~

For millennia, the demon Bright fed on the suffering of humans, torturing them to sate its endless hunger. Then it discovered a lure: a person whose joy could extinguish its hunger entirely.

Of course, a demon can’t keep a person happy. In the end, Bright killed its first lure, Tsadi.

Still, it craved the satisfaction only a lure could provide. So it found another lure: Sunrise.

And then killed her too.

Look, change is hard, okay? Also, humans are irritatingly fragile.

But it must have learned from its mistakes now. Bright is determined to make an ally of its third lure, Badger.

But can any human survive a demon’s capricious, sinister nature?

~

The Anesh Archipelago has always been plagued by demons: irredeemable creatures of pure evil. That was the unquestioned truth — until the angels granted a demon hunter's sigil to a demon: Bright. But when Guild White accepted Bright as a hunter-in-training, that didn't settle the question.

Instead, it opened a rift that set hunter against hunter. At the center of the conflict is not just Bright, but those closest to it: Sunrise, the first demon hunter to befriend it, as well as her own friends.

The division leads to violence, spreading far beyond the halls of Guild White, threatening to destroy the guild system itself. That outcome would benefit no one: not Bright, nor its allies, nor the demon hunters who oppose it—

—no one, that is, except for every other demon in Anesh.

~

After seasons of being stalked and threatened by the demon Bright, Sunrise turned the tables on it at last, luring it into a trap not even a god-demon could escape. Her long ordeal over, all she wants is to return to her safe, ordinary life in Oak-by-the-Water.

But now that she has shown her true power, the remaining demons of the Anesh Archipelago regard her as an existential threat. Can even the demon hunters’ guild protect Sunrise from this Demon’s Alliance?

~

In an effort to reform, the god-demon Bright sought the aid of Sunrise, a girl whose demon hunter’s sigil could end its otherwise insatiable hunger for human suffering. For a time, it looked as though this plan would work.

But the demon hunters’ guild does not believe in the possibility of reform for demons.

And to demons, a reformed god-demon poses an existential threat: one they have formed an alliance to stop.

Now Sunrise and Bright must evade hunters and demons alike, and nowhere in the Anesh Archipelago is safe for them. Their only hope is to escape to another archipelago: a perilous journey that no human from Anesh has made in recorded history.

~

With the help of the hunting team Determination White, Sunrise escaped from Bright, the immortal demon who’d been alternately tormenting and protecting her for seasons. Now cleared of the charge of colluding with a demon, Sunrise has joined Determination White with one goal in mind:

Capture Bright and ensure it can never hurt anyone else, ever again.

But Bright is ancient and immortal. It had once hoped to ally with humans to end its hunger. But if that’s not an option—

—well, it has formed an alliance with demons to conquer an archipelago before.

And with everything it has learned from its prior experiences, this time will go even better.

After his first romance ended in bitterness and anger, and his disastrous first marriage ended in the death of his wife, Lord Jaguar of Honor has no interest in a third attempt at love. But he is the sole surviving member of his House. It is his duty to wed, and he is not a man to shirk from an obligation, no matter how unpleasant.

The daughter of a disgraced traitor, saved from ruin only by the grace of their highnesses, Lady Raindrop of Endurance has no romantic expectations of marriage. Her qualifications for a husband: suitable age and wealth, of a House that will make a good ally for Endurance.

*"You know, I am far more than fortunate! I am the sister of a Great Lord who loves me, my House is sound, I am sought after by an attractive, wealthy lord who is not much older than I am, and -- let us not forget -- I have Cantara's Very Best Puppy!” Raindrop said. “Do you have any idea how good all of this looks to my twelve-year-old self who was engaged to a man forty years her senior and watching her world tilt towards treachery and rebellion?"*

But a monster hunts in the forests of Honor, and rumors swirl around the death of the Brooding Lord’s first wife. Did Lord Jaguar murder his own wife for her failure to provide him with the requisite heir? Or did his former lover kill her, in a jealous rage?

“Is there any evidence of this?” Raindrop asked. “These are the lowest quality rumors. It’s as if they put no thought into them at all.”

Or was there some other sinister force at work --

-- one which might threaten Raindrop herself?

Author Commentary

It’s finally out!

After I finished writing The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince, I knew that I wanted to write another standalone romance in the setting. And I knew that I wanted Lady Raindrop — the vivacious, irrepressible younger sister to Lord Lightning, whose household Eclipse and Dyaneli rescue — to be one of the protagonists.

But it wasn’t until I corresponded with a friend about Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey that I knew the kind of story I wanted to tell.

The basic gothic romance plot involves a brooding, possibly sinister lord, a creepy house, a terrible secret, and a scared, timid young woman jumping at shadows as she struggles to survive.

And I thought: what would Raindrop — bold, fearless, relentless, and pragmatic — do if she were in a gothic romance?

And that was how The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady was born: a queer polyamorous romance featuring two brooding men with dark pasts and too many secrets, and a young woman neither impressed nor intimidated by any of it. That was the cover concept, too:

Monstrous ghostly floating head: “I am the threatening force in a gothic novel”
Looming house: “I am the spooky setting for a gothic novel”
Dark figure in background: “I am the brooding lord in a gothic novel”
Woman in foreground: “Puppy!”

o/~One of these things is not like the others o/~

I had so much fun creating this book; I hope you’ll enjoy reading it.

It would take a miracle for Eclipse to accept the role his parents believe he was born to take: that of a princess.

But the fey lands are strange and perilous, and the fey have their own ideas about what kind of miracle Eclipse needs.

Golden Coils

Author Commentary

Silver Scales for $2.99!

Other Stuff