Once upon a time, back when I was taking a break between day jobs, I fancied myself writing all day, every day. I was going to tackle all my stories and make serious progress!
As it turned out, the only things I tackled were naps. Lots and lots of naps.
Sometimes I think I would like to try again. But I happen to like my current day job. My bank account likes my current day job, too. Maybe I’ll revisit the idea in ten years or so, when I semi-retire.
Until then, I’ll just have to write around my job. And my naps.
A couple of weeks ago, when I was (finally) getting ready to move forward with getting Freeroll published, I reached out to the person I always worked with to hire them for formatting and all that fun stuff. Unfortunately, that person was no longer able to work with me. My first reaction was to immediately look for someone else to do the job, all the while in the back of my mind practicing my “by the way, I write M/M stories that contain the occasional instance of thorough adult activities and semi-frequent references to those activities” spiel because I understand that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But then I thought, why not just do the job myself?
So I did. And it didn’t kill me. And then I went back and did a little tweaking to Family Matters and The Rising Son, and that didn’t kill me either.
I’m really happy with how everything turned out. I should have trusted myself with the process from the beginning.
Anywho, the Published Works page has been updated. Now I need to go work on adding more to it.
Picture it. Florida. Mid-1990s. My brother had just left the Army and moved back to the States from Germany, where my nephew was born and raised up until then. I remember the look on his three-year-old face when he realized that I could speak German. The realization that this “auntie” he had just met knew how to speak to him in a language he recognized was absolutely precious. I’d like to think that it made him feel a little bit more comfortable in such a new and strange place. And he grew up to be a wonderful human being, so I’m going to take a pinch of credit for that.
I didn’t originally decide to learn German because of that; I started learning it before my brother even met his future wife. Even so, it ended up coming in clutch. I will treasure that memory for the rest of my life.
Over the years, I have found many a literary gem over at Smashwords, including some of my forever favorite stories. I highly recommend checking out their Summer/Winter sale!
And oops, I tripped and dropped a little flagrant self-promotion all over myself. How clumsy of me. 🙂
“The world was a different place when I was turned. For all I knew, it was never going to change. I would have rather died than spend the rest of existence as someone’s property.” ~ Jacob, Family Matters
“Did you know they all cheered with every single lash? My punishment was very entertaining, apparently. I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t hang me. The show would’ve been over much quicker.” ~ Jacob, Scars from the Past (a Family Matters bonus story)
Today I was thinking about my fictional character, who was partially inspired by a very real person.
While his past as a slave isn’t a primary focus of the series, it is something that I wanted to acknowledge. And while he is, perhaps oddly enough, one of the most well-adjusted characters overall, he is still occasionally affected by his past trauma, as evidenced by the fact that after two centuries, he still cringes whenever his partner touches his scarred back.
I was thinking about this because there are those who would say that slaves didn’t have it all that bad. There are also those who would rather erase that time in our history altogether. And that, friends, is all the bullshit.
Anyway, I have to be up in six hours. Have a great day, and a fantastic Black History Month. And always remember what they want you to forget.
Happy New Year! (A week later and an entire month since my last post, but still.)
I would love to say that I’ve been writing non-stop day and night since we last spoke, but the truth is that I’ve been freefalling down a Squid Game rabbit hole since the second season debuted, and I regret nothing. I am so in love with that show right now. Send help.
Have a picture of my fictional child with my very real book for consolation.
The Rising Son has been submitted to D2D and will be added to the Published Works page once digital and print options become available. Now I can finally focus my full attention on #3, Two Princes. I really can’t wait to get to where the story is going. It’s tempting to wish that I could write full-time, but I also know that if I didn’t have my day job, I would just spend most of my free time gaming and napping and thinking about writing. Plus I would be considerably poorer.
I really intended to avoid doing all the social media writer stuff, but that Bluesky seems like an okay place. More importantly, a safe place. I’ll update when I get around to creating an account.
That’s all for now. I’m off to bed in the hopes that we’re not buried in snow when I wake up. At least not more than we already are. If any of you are also in Northeast PA, stay warm and stay safe.
I clearly have some sort of subconscious trauma from commas, because I used them very sparingly in The Rising Son. Most of my final edit has been adding them where appropriate. I’m not sure what they did to offend me in the past, but I’ll try to be better about including them.
(And yet, oddly enough, I will never, ever neglect to use an Oxford comma. And I will notice, and mildly judge, the lack of one. Go figure.)
I’ll have TRS off to be formatted by tomorrow night, hopefully. If so, I’ll have it published by this coming weekend. I meant to have it done sooner, but I went on vacation and for once, I didn’t even think about writing. Well, no, I thought about it. I always think about it. I just didn’t do it.
That’s all for now. If any of you are tackling NaNoWriMo this month, good luck!
C. L. Ingro 