In my last, so very long ago post, I mentioned that I was about to (re)publish Freeroll so I could be done with my old pen name. Well, apparently my vampires became jealous that I dared to pay attention to another story for even a moment and decided to bombard me with all the inspiration. As a result, Two Princes is pretty much finished, and now I will start editing it and pretend that I haven’t been doing that all along while writing it.
But first, I will get Freeroll published. I’m giving myself a deadline of my birthday to do it, which is coming up soon. So no more moving the goalposts, damn it.
Anywho, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was lovely, even though I’m pretty sure I ate enough turkey to last me until next year. 🙂 Happy writing!
I was just remembering that time when I said I wanted to have Two Princes finished last month. Heh, that was funny. Deadlines are adorable.
But alas, I am actually publishing a story within the next few weeks. Just not a vampire story. Freeroll is the last of the stories I originally published under my old pen name, and I decided I wanted to go ahead and deal with that so I can properly lay Emma Peterson to rest once and for all.
Story summary: Daniel’s addiction to, or rather, enthusiasm for gambling has finally caught up with him. He finds himself indebted to an alleged crime lord who doesn’t accept payment plans. But instead of having to sacrifice his body parts to pay what he owes, he must drive the alleged crime lord’s extremely attractive nephew, Javier, to Florida and back to Pennsylvania for… reasons. Simple enough, right?
Some belated Fathers’ Day love for my two favorite vampire daddies. Vaddies?
From An Unexpected Addition, a short story included in Family Matters as bonus content.
~*~*~*~
For a couple of vampires who had learned, sometimes begrudgingly, to make use of all the modern conveniences that the world now had to offer, Dominic and Jacob were quickly discovering that diapers were one of the most frustrating modern conveniences of all.
When it comes to creating stories, I think I spend more time coming up with character names than any other step in the process. I even remember having one of those baby name books back in the day for the sole purpose of having ideas for character names. And while I’m hardly naïve enough to think that every single one of my characters’ names are original, sometimes I do think I might be a little bit in the clear with some of them. Except apparently not.
I loved the movie Mulholland Drive. It was mysterious and creepy and lovely, the kind of movie that was stuck in my head for days after I first watched it 20+ years ago. A few weeks ago, I decided to read the TV Tropes pages for it (something I’ll occasionally do for movies as opposed to rewatching them), and it was there that I realized that a fictional Vincenzo Castigliane existed well before I named my Vincenzo Castigliane.
I totally remember Dan Hedaya’s character, and I remember that scene. But if you had asked me his character’s name before I read that TV Tropes entry, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. And yet, deep in the pit of my subconscious, I must have decided that Vincenzo Castigliane was an awesome name. And, I mean, it really is. Also, this Vincenzo probably hasn’t done half the terrible things that my Vincenzo has done… maybe.
Anyway, hi there. Two Princes is coming along nicely. In a perfect world, I’d have it done by the end of this month. Realistically, I’m aiming to have it done by the end of next month, though that might depend on whether or not I decide to pause writing it to work on a short story for Father’s Day. I want to write all the things. I just wish I had all the time.
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!
I’ve been published in some form or another for almost twenty years now. And while I’m grateful for the emergence of digital publishing because of how it broadened every writer’s horizons in ways we couldn’t have imagined back then (despite my initial “get off my lawn” attitude about it, sorry!), at the end of the day, for me at least, there’s still nothing quite as lovely as holding a physical representation of a story I created. Or a book, as the cool kids call it.
All that being said, I’m very happy with how this turned out. Using Draft2Digital was shockingly easy, and it makes me really grateful for how far self-publishing has come over the years (for those of you who may have been around long enough to remember things like the Small Publisher’s Co-op back in the day). I’m hoping to have The Rising Son (#2) republished within the next few weeks, and after that, I can fully focus on finishing Two Princes (#3) and Freeroll (part 1 is available here but not forever).
I love it when a plan comes together. Okay, yeah, that’s from The A-Team, but it still applies.
I really love being in “the zone” when I’m working on a story. The problem is that I forget to do little things like sleep. Who has time for that when there’s creating to be done? Back when I originally wrote Family Matters, I was lucky if I got 3-4 hours of sleep a night, in addition to working a day job. But I just couldn’t turn off my brain. My entire existence was writing that story. And I was perfectly okay with that… except that one time I had a little bout of microsleep while I was driving home from work and, during those few seconds, dreamt about Philip Seymour Hoffman being naked and covered in gold paint for some reason. I have no idea where that came from; maybe my brain decided to give me one of the weirdest mini-dreams ever as a reminder to get some damn sleep before I wake up in a ditch. At best.
So now I’m determined to get more sleep while I’m working on a story. Maybe not tonight, because it’s almost 6am right now, but eventually.
The revised Family Matters, complete with a bunch of bonus content, is in the hands of my formatter now (@arkonna at Fiverr, who has been exceedingly awesome with my previous stories), and as soon as they’re done working their magic, I’ll be publishing it. Stay tuned.
As I was setting all of this up and WP prompted me for a site title, I briefly contemplated “The Cling” based on my name having most of those letters in it. Then I looked it up and discovered it was slang for a clitoris ring. So, that almost happened.
I’m here to talk about writing. Most of my own work consists of gay and bisexual supernatural beings. Primarily vampires. Eventually angels. And whatever else pops into my head. It’s pretty crowded in there.
It’s very nice to meet you. Or, if you knew my friend, “Emma Peterson,” it’s very nice to see you again.
C. L. Ingro 