Hello there.
I’m unhappy to report that I didn’t manage to get as much done for Haven 2 as I’d have liked. Basically, I ran into a few personal problems pretty unexpectedly. Nothing serious, technically speaking, but they definitely took the motivation out of me for a little bit. On top of that, my medical concerns that make it hard to read/concentrate have returned and I’m dealing with them.
But I have been making plans and decisions, and I have been doing some things behind the scenes.
So first let’s talk about where I’m at with Haven 2.
At present, it’s about half written. Right now, I’m attempting to find some fucking way to balance my schedule between Misty Vixen and Crystal Candy, and my personal life, and also emotional issues. It’s incredibly frustrating because I actually used to be really good at this. Looking back at 2015, 2016, & 2017 is kind of mind-blowing, because with few exceptions, I pretty much put something new out every four days. But the thing to consider there is that it was one thing at a time, very straightforward, and I basically had to write, at most, 3,000 words a day.
Now I’m under pressure to write entire novels AND keep up with Crystal Candy, which is currently selling. Now that I have a bit of a better idea of the picture, I think I might have put myself in golden handcuffs again. Because Crystal Candy is indeed doing well, but it’s not doing well enough to take all the pressure off of Misty Vixen. Basically, they’re now both doing just good enough to warrant working really hard on fucking BOTH of them.
It’s like having two broken engines keeping a plane aloft. Neither is good enough on its own to keep the plane flying, so I have to desperately keep rushing back and forth between them, making hasty repairs and furiously trying to keep them working and fueled up, at the same time. By myself. While I’m exhausted and ill.
You can see how this might be an extremely taxing and frustrating situation.
But anyway. Haven 2. It’s half written, and I have the cover art for it, and I think it looks amazing. I am going to try very hard to have it out by the end of July. I’m currently working on a new overall schedule that I’m hoping will accommodate all these varied aspects.
As for future Misty Vixen stuff, I’d say realistically at this point I’m going to work on Haven and Parasexual. I’d like to get a few more Haven books out, especially if they keep selling as well as the first one, and I’d also really like to get Parasexual finished off. I’ve got the next two covers already, and it shouldn’t be super difficult to get the final one, either.
And that’s just the writing aspect of it all. As you know, I’ve been doing ‘renovation’ on Misty Vixen since last year, and it’s looking like it’s going to keep going on for a long time, for a few reasons.
The first is that I want this to be the last time I ever go back and do fucking ANYTHING with my older works. I want to hit a point where I only have to look at now and ahead, not backwards, too. That really fucks with me, and because I’ve made a few decisions, I suddenly have like a shitload of things from the past that need tending to.
The second is that, although yes, part of the reason I’m doing this is because I’m fucking neurotic about my backlog, I have hit a point where I feel that doing this can make a potentially genuinely massive impact on my earning ability. I honestly think that Haven sold as well as it has primarily because of the cover art. So that means the biggest thing holding me back is apparently my cover art. To that end, I am going to begin the long, drawn-out process of getting brand new cover art created for most of my backlog. This is going to be an excruciatingly time-consuming and EXPENSIVE process, even though the person with whom I am working is actually very reasonable. The problem is that I have so many fucking titles. In order to get caught up to speed, I need just about 30 brand new covers hand-drawn. So…yeah. That’s a huge investment.
I already have covers made for Wanderlust I & II, and they look spectacular.
Now, another thing that’s going to make this difficult and time-consuming is that although I did have a person helping me with editing all my old work, that…slowed down. And then stopped. I’ve been having trouble getting that back on track. And the whole point is to have another person look over the titles.
And yet another thing that’s making it go slowly is I’m having medical problems that specifically make it hard to edit. It sounds fucking ridiculous, and it is, but it’s also my present reality. I’m still trying to determine the root cause of it, and I’m positive that it’s exacerbated by stress, because I can generally read books pretty well (unless I’m stressed), but I fucking hate editing, and I SERIOUSLY hate editing my older shit that I’ve already edited like four fucking times, so even reading like 500 words gives me a bad headache sometimes, combined with dizziness/lightheadedness, and it’s very difficult to focus. Honestly, it’s a huge fucking pain in the ass, and when it gets bad enough, I can’t even write.
At present, Wanderlust I & II are basically ready to go. They are edited and covers are made. Really, all I’ll need to do is update the back matter and remake the cover for the paperbacks. And this is admittedly giving me pause. Amazon did something to change what they consider ‘correct’ for the dimensions of a paperback and it literally won’t let me upload. Notice Parasexual 3 and Haven STILL don’t have paperbacks. I admittedly haven’t been working on it because almost no one buys paperbacks, but I do intend to figure it out at some point. Honestly, it’s just one more thing I fucking hate about Amazon and their needless difficulty.
I’m about halfway through editing Wanderlust III. I’m to the part with Piper right now. I’m attempting to at least do a few pages every day, sort of chipping away at it. Honestly, one of the problems is that it’s such a daunting task. Combined, the Wanderlust series is over 200,000 words. That’s 200,000 words I really don’t feel like reading.
If all goes well, ideally, I’ll be able to re-publish the Wanderlust series by early August, but that’s a big if. I’ll certainly be trying.
After the Wanderlust series is up, I’ll try to get a few of the smaller projects out of the way: Exploration, My Undead Lover, the freebies. Then probably The Misty Vixen Starter Pack, which isn’t going to get a new cover.
I guess I should talk about that: Which ones aren’t getting new covers. The Demoness books will not be getting new covers. I like them and intend to continue working with that cover artist in that regard. The Starter Pack won’t because I feel like it’s basically perfect. Women of the Wild will not, same reason as Demoness. The Parasexual series is kind of in a twilight zone. If I do update anything, it will be to ask the cover artist (same as Demoness, Women of the Wild), to make backgrounds. Everything else will be getting new covers similar to Haven.
I also think I’m going to try to adopt a schedule of switching back and forth between writing what I might consider a more pressing and necessary title, and then writing something I’m personally more invested in getting out, to try and balance that out. So for example I’ll hit Haven for awhile as the primary, pressing series, and then alternate with Parasexual until it’s done, then finally get Sex & Survival 4 written and out, then maybe do a rewrite of Alien Harem.
So yeah, Misty Vixen is kind of just a big mess right now, and a mess it’s going to remain for a long time. Probably a year, maybe two. Unless I somehow cure my health issues, and find a shitload of motivation, and my editor becomes more reliable. None of which I honestly see happening.
Now, on to the Crystal Candy side of things!
I finished A Warm Place! It wrapped with Episode 12. If you read it, I hope you liked the ending.
I’ve been planning the next series all last week. It’s called Refuge, and it’s a sci-fi survival harem. I don’t know how long it’s going to go on for, but I do know that I’m going to re-implement my plan to switch between two series. I’ll probably do three stories, then hop over to a second series, and go back and forth until they’re done. Because I think A Warm Place suffered because I was getting sick of it. I actually enacted this plan while writing A Warm Place, and it would have worked, except that Planet of the Bugs was a bad call and actually hindered progress, rather than helped it.
What will that third series be? I’m not sure, but probably a fantasy harem. I’ve got a cool idea.
So yeah, that’s it. Again, I am going to try and have Haven 2 out by the end of the month, but I still have a lot of shit to deal with, so bear that in mind.