Can People Make Up Their Minds - Part 2

So I’m frustrated again.

SPOILERS FOR A WARM PLACE AS A WHOLE

I get it. Some people aren’t going to like my work. Some are going to absolutely hate it. And some of those people will feel the need to tell me about it. This, in and of itself, is whatever. I don’t need everyone to like my work, I don’t need every review to be glowing. Honestly, the more critical reviews are really helpful and I welcome them.

But I’ve been coming across more people getting pissy about the nature of the relationships in A Warm Place.

Quick question: What the FUCK happened to letting characters develop?

I’ve largely got two problems with these complaints.

The first is that: Have some fucking patience. Like, Jesus Christ, they aren’t going to fall in love IMMEDIATELY. This shit takes time, and not everyone needs to fall in love! Some people can just be sex friends. Like, just because characters aren’t technically dating or in love doesn’t mean there’s no emotional connection there. That was kind of a dynamic I was playing at. Although Chris and Delilah’s connection is purely transactional at first, they grow to really like each other. And the most annoying part is, Delilah basically does fall at his feet and worship him. But just because they acknowledge the fact that they aren’t outright dating, and that she ends up dating another woman that Chris also fucks, none of that matters? Why?

Second: Again, seriously, what the fuck happened to storylines and character development? What happened to letting things play out? Chris and Megan meet under hostile circumstances in a hostile world. Is it truly that difficult to get that it’ll take time for them to warm up to each other? I mean shit, they already fucked within like a day of meeting each other. Their relationship GROWS over the course of the novels.

What the hell is happening to people’s expectations? You can’t just have everything you want immediately or there’s hardly any point to anything.

And this is coming from someone who actually accelerates relationships and sex WAY more than is realistic. In short: I feel like I’m already giving people what they want (relationships/sex) faster than is realistic, and yet they’re telling me IT ISN’T FAST ENOUGH.

Whatever, rant over.

Still having fun with A Warm Place 4, but I’m beginning to get the feeling that some people are going to really hate it. I wish I was better at writing bland bullshit that appeals to everyone.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (March 2021)

 
 

First thing is first.

A Warm Place 3 is out! I managed to get it done just before March.

I didn’t think I’d actually get the whole thing written, edited, formatted, and published in a month, but I did it in 27 days! What sucks is that if I’d had my shit together, I could’ve had it done in like 20 days.

Anyway, I’m now recovering and taking a little break.

Next thing that’s coming out is A Warm Place Prelude - 3 Collected. After waffling on it for awhile, I finally decided to not only do the Collections, but to add in bonus shorts. I think I’ll just be taking whether or not to add bonus shorts on a case-by-case basis. This short will take place in between Prelude & A Warm Place 1, and feature Mary from Prelude.

Before I talk about A Warm Place 4, which contains some spoilers, I’ll talk about everything else.

I’m in a strange place right now, but it’s a good strange, for once. A Warm Place is doing really well, and it’s finally taking the pressure off. Remember how many times I’ve talked about finding something to take the pressure off? I finally found it. Consequently, I don’t feel like I desperately need to be working on two projects simultaneously.

I still want to get my second pen name ready, because A Warm Place can’t last forever, and it’s ultimately just a temporary stop-gap, because the problems with Misty Vixen that I’ve already outlined will still exist. But at the moment, I’ve got 12 novels planned for A Warm Place, and that will last me through the rest of 2021, probably even somewhat into 2022.

Now obviously I want a good six month or so buffer between when I start working on the new name and when I launch it so that I can have another buffer after launch, but for the next few months, I want to kind of take it easy. So I’m going to be working on A Warm Place most of the time, and on the side, I’ll FINALLY get to indulge in some fan fiction! I’ll also be writing a few incest stories. I’ve got several set in the A Warm Place universe that I think about a lot.

My first erotic fan fiction is going to be the Dragon Age one with Fiona, Lysette, and a lot of other girls, and I’ll get nude fan art of them as I can, for the full effect. I’ve also been scouting around for a place to host my fan fiction and I think I’m going to go with Archive of Our Own. It seems to be fairly NSFW friendly. I’ll also be hosting it here on the site, though honestly I want to try and find a better way of hosting.

After the Collection, I’ll get to work on A Warm Place 4. Which I’d like to talk about now.

If you don’t want to know anything at all about what’s coming next, stop reading now. Spoilers.

I initially had a plan for how I wanted to handle A Warm Place as a whole. Those of you who have read it in its original incarnation (should) know by now that I began the new series chronologically before the original version, and that I have intended to include a rewritten, somewhat reimagined edition of that version. To be clear, it will be an entire rewrite. I’ll just be using what I wrote as a guideline, taking the best parts and the parts I liked and throwing out whatever doesn’t fit, and add in a lot more.

After some consideration, I finally decided it would be best to make that rewrite happen as A Warm Place 4, 5, &, 6.

However, in order to make it work, Chris needs to be alone at the beginning of A Warm Place 4. This would break a pretty big rule of harem novels, even though A Warm Place isn’t necessarily a harem series…although it kind of is. This is why I didn’t specifically title it as such, even though it has many of the trappings of a harem story, most of them intentional. That rule being that the protagonist doesn’t lose all the women in his harem at once.

I believe I have found a way to make it work, and obviously I’ll be introducing new characters (the ones from the original version, Lara, Susan, etc.), and I’ll be getting back to Megan and Delilah and the others in the future. The thing is, I’m fairly confident in my ability to tell this story decently, I’m less confident in my casual reader base who will just be angry that Megan and Delilah and Elizabeth are no longer in the story and just stop reading.

I’m even more nervous about this because A Warm Place is doing like really well. I finally feel like I’m actually succeeding as a writer with this series, and here I am taking a big narrative risk on it.

But I feel like it has to be this way, and am praying people will just trust me.

So yeah, the first collection will be out sometime this month, and A Warm Place 4 will be out probably early April.

Wish me luck and thank you so much for the love and support you’ve given A Warm Place thus far!

A Warm Place 3 Preview

Okay, here is the first chapter of A Warm Place 3! You can read the first two chapters if you are a 1$/month or higher Patron on Patreon here!

I had seen destruction before.

Burned down buildings, collapsed buildings, places that had been shot up.

But I don’t think I’d ever, in real life, seen so much destruction.

The rise in the land we had come out of the forest onto dipped gradually towards a frozen river maybe half a mile away, and the township of Pine Lake lay maybe another half mile beyond that. The incline continued until about the river, where it leveled out with the rest of the ground the town was built onto, so we had a decent view as we hurried through the snow. And I kind of wish we didn’t have a decent view.

It was making me a little sick with worry and anxiety.

There had probably been about eighty to a hundred structures grouped together in the town proper, and the fire had destroyed or seriously damaged damn near all of them. From what I could tell, the only part of the town that still showed any activity was an untouched section of ten or so buildings closest to us, set slightly apart from the rest of the settlement. There were twin rows of structures situated along a stretch of road that was probably intended to be the city’s primary entrance or main street.

I saw people moving among the buildings, but not as many as I would have liked to see.

“What do you think happened?” Megan asked as we hurried along. We’d slowed after five or so minutes, as it was obvious that whatever had happened was already over with and although people likely needed help, it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference if we arrived there a few minutes early. That and a mile through snow and cold wasn’t something you could just marathon your way through, at least not quickly.

Plus we had Elizabeth to think about.

So we settled into a slower but steadier pace.

“Either some kind of accident, maybe a generator or a fire got out of control, or some dipshit with a cigarette did the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or they’ve got an arsonist problem. Or there was an attack that got way out of control,” I replied.

“God I’m almost hoping Lindsay didn’t come here,” Delilah muttered.

“We’ll find her,” I promised, “one way or another.”

“Yeah,” Delilah replied quietly, and said no more.

We reached the river not much later. It wasn’t a massive river, I was glad to see, and it looked pretty frozen solid. We took the time to move a little ways to the left, where it narrowed to maybe six feet across and looked pretty firm, and then walked over one by one. No one fell and the ice didn’t shift or crack even a little, so lucky break there. I always hated walking on ice. Even when it looked three feet thick, I was still paranoid that it would give way beneath me. I hadn’t taken a plunge so far, but there was a first time for everything.

I tried to get a sense of what was happening and found myself wishing for binoculars. People weren’t running around, I could tell that much, but they were moving with purpose, it seemed. I heard some sounds come echoing out: voices, hammering. It was hard to tell if there was anything happening in the dark mass of burned buildings beyond because so many of them were still smoking, but I didn’t think there were any active fires left.

Hopefully not, anyway.

My mind began running through a list of things that were likely going to have to be taken care of, or at least checked on. Ninety percent of their town had just burned down, and while there was certainly the possibility that either some stores of supplies had survived in the burned out parts, or that they had stashed a healthy cache elsewhere in the region, or they’d lucked out and one of the buildings that had survived intact had been a massive cache of food or medicine, I figured they would need help anyway.

Good settlements had systems in place, but no system, no matter how good or how quality the backup might be, needed some amount of help when some huge wrench got thrown in the gears like this. This was a full-blown disaster.

Then again, depending on how many people had died in the fire, their new population might also reflect their new levels of supplies.

Dark, but it would take a lot of the pressure off, potentially.

I was still thinking about this when the people actually seemed to take notice of us and began reacting. I was in the process of preparing what I was going to say to them once we got close enough when, abruptly, one of them raced to the edge of the town and opened fire on us with a pistol. Delilah shouted and dropped to the ground. Megan went down on one knee immediately, grabbing for her rifle. I stepped in front of Elizabeth.

“STOP! WE’VE GOT A PREGNANT WOMAN!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. We were lucky: sound carried pretty well here, and we had managed to get close enough that they heard us. It was the first thing that popped into my head and apparently it worked, because the shooting stopped right away.

A few other people approached the one with the gun and they began to talk, though I couldn’t make out a word.

“Megan, relax,” I said. She had the rifle out and shouldered.

“If they feel like turning hostile-” she began.

“Then we’re probably fucked,” I replied. “There’s no cover out here. Maybe we might be able to do something, but I’d rather not start shooting what are probably innocent people who are dealing with the aftermath of a disaster that probably killed most of their population.”

She sighed and lowered the rifle. “Fine.”

I offered Delilah a helping hand. She looked a little embarrassed as she got up out of the snow, brushing it from her clothes, but if Elizabeth hadn’t been with us, I’d’ve been joining her in diving. In a way, I was a little surprised, (though not unpleasantly), to discover that my natural instinct was to step in front of her and try to shield her with my own body.

The little conference seemed to end and one of the people, a blonde woman, I thought, it was hard to tell at this distance, separated from the group, stepping closer to us.

“What do you want!?” she called. Yes, definitely a woman.

“We’re looking for someone!” I replied after a moment, deciding honesty was going to be the best policy for now. “And we need a place to stay.”

A pause. “I’m sorry, but unless you’ve got an amazing trade, we can’t afford to take on any more people!”

“We’ve got a lot of guns and bullets to trade!” I shouted back.

Because hey, we did.

Another pause. The woman turned around, talked with the other three or four people gathered there in a loose knot for about a minute, and then turned back.

“Fine! Come over here to me! Nice and easy! Then we can talk!”

“On our way!” I said. As we started walking, I talked to the others. “No sudden moves, and keep your hands away from your guns. They’re obviously jumpy, and I’d say from their reaction that either this was done to them on purpose or they suspect it was. Outsiders suddenly showing up likely won’t be viewed as good, at least at first. Even with the guns to trade we’ll probably be operating from a weak position, so don’t get pissy.” I paused. “Got it, Megan?”

“Yes,” she growled. “I’m not stupid.”

“I know you aren’t stupid, it’s just that you’re-”

“Emotional. Yeah. I get it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to fuck this up,” she replied, and she sounded calmer, at least. So that was good.

Probably reminding herself that most of their friends and family had just been set on fire probably the previous night.

The whole ‘someone else has it worse’ argument tends to be pretty hit or miss with a lot of people, honestly miss with most people from what I’ve seen, but when a horrific example of that argument is dead on front and center for you, it works a lot better.

Pain has a way of motivating people and tragedy has a way of humbling them.

As we crossed the final distance of snow between us and them, I knew for sure that I was going to offer my help. I mean, unless it turned out they were total assholes or something. If anyone needed help, then fuck, it was these people.

I could tell that even as we finished drawing closer. There were five of them standing in a little group, and more people had stopped, strung out along the road behind them, looking at us. They all looked tired, haunted, and grim. Most of their faces were marred with either ash and soot or dried blood.

The woman who had spoken, who I could tell right away was their leader, pale, blonde, and not much bigger than Delilah, stared hard at us. Maybe five and a half feet, not petite but she seemed slim under her heavy brown coat and dirty gray snow pants. She had a revolver in her hand and the way she held it, the stance she had, told me she knew how to use it quite well.

“Okay, that’s close enough,” she said when we were about five yards out. She regarded us each one after another with tired brown eyes. “I’m coming over,” she said after a minute, holstering the pistol, “try anything and my people will shoot you dead.”

“Understood,” I replied simply.

That seemed to surprise her, just a little. She turned around and hesitated. “Get back to work!” she yelled at the dozen or so people scattered about the street.

Oh yeah, she was in charge.

She had that voice.

That ‘pay the fuck attention to me and do what I say right goddamn now’ voice.

She walked over to us and three of the people slipped pistols from their holsters, not actively aiming at us, but clearly ready to draw and fire, pregnant woman or no. Fair enough, I supposed, but it did make me quite nervous.

She stopped maybe two yards out and up close, I could tell two things right away: she was mature, both physically and in her authoritative air, and she was very attractive. She reminded me of Hazel.

“First, show me what we’re talking about here. We’re not looking for fucking pea shooters. We need actual guns,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied, and carefully got out of my backpack, then motioned for Megan to do the same. We put our packs down in the snow and unzipped them. I pulled out five pistols, all gotten from the assholes who’d tried to kill us before the blizzard, and showed each to the woman.

“Four nine millimeters and a thirty-eight. All presently unloaded. We’d have to formally go through it all, which I’d like to do in a better environment, but I’d say there’s enough for two full loads for each pistol.”

“What about one of those rifles?” she asked.

“I’m afraid they’re non-negotiable, but we are willing to work with you, and Megan and I here are very good shots,” I replied.

The woman considered that for a moment, staring at us hard, probably trying to figure out if we were full of shit or not.

Her eyes cut to Elizabeth, then down to her belly.

“I hate to ask but...can you show me your stomach? I’ve had people try to bullshit me before about pregnancy, they think it’s a sympathy ace to play,” she said, sounding honestly apologetic.

Elizabeth looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders, indicating it was her call.

“Fine,” she said. She unzipped her coat, then lifted her shirt and undershirt, exposing her pale, rounded belly. “Satisfied?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” the woman replied.

Elizabeth quickly bundled back up.

The woman’s expression hardened again after a few seconds as she looked at me. Great. “I’ll take these five guns and one full load for each as an entrance fee to consider further trading.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Megan said, and I tensed. “You want five guns and all those bullets just to consider allowing us the pleasure of trying to trade with you?”

“Yes. Take it or leave it,” the woman replied bluntly.

“We’ll take it,” I replied.

“Fine.” She turned and gestured at the group standing guard. Two broke away and began walking over. “Get the ammo out, once we have it collected it up, you can walk with me to the gas station over there and we can negotiate further.”

“All right,” I replied.

She frowned as we got the bullets out. “If we do reach an agreement, whatever it is, good trade or no, all four of you will have to pull your own weight if you intend to stick around. And there’s a shitload of weight to be pulled, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I understand,” I replied, accepting and quickly checking the magazines Megan handed to me from her pack before setting them carefully down next to the pistols.

The woman stared at me a moment longer as I zipped up my pack and slowly stood back up. The two men came to stand beside her.

“Grab it,” she said. As they did so, she looked into my eyes. “I’m Lisa.”

“Chris.”

When they were finished, she turned and began walking away. “Come on.”

We followed after her. I could tell Delilah wanted to ask about Lindsay, or at least wanted me to ask, but I looked right at her and gave my head a very short but firm shake. Not yet. As I’d said, we were already playing from a disadvantage, and although I was getting good, just strained, vibes from Lisa, I didn’t put it past almost anyone to take advantage at least some of the time. If our hand was weak now, then letting them know how desperate we were to find a specific person, or giving them a name too early might make the situation worse for us. Although that game could only play out for so much longer.

We were going to have to put our cards on the table, and soon.

The gas station she’d indicated was the first structure on the left side of the street. Directly across from it was an old restaurant, what might have been a Tex-Mex place, judging by the faded red sign over the front entrance.

At a glance, I counted a grand total of nine buildings left standing. I spied an apartment building at the end of the road, one of those long, low motels that was a string of a dozen or so rooms, and the rest could’ve been just about anything. Stores, shops, or restaurants of any kind. Lisa’s armed entourage followed in our footsteps while she walked ahead of us. Nobody said anything. I thought I heard someone crying somewhere nearby. The people were moving things around the street. Several were carrying dead bodies.

We walked into the gas station and an old bell dinged loudly as we did. Lisa walked right up to the front counter, got behind it, and faced us.

“What, exactly, are we negotiating for?” Megan asked.

“What do you want?” Lisa replied.

I glanced back. Two of the men stood out front, two stood just inside. They stared hard at us. I looked back to Lisa. “A place to stay for the four of us. Preferably all in one room.”

“That’ll be expensive,” she replied. “You’ll have to make a pretty big down payment just to get a room, and then we’ll have to assign you work. And you’ll have to do it, and not whine about it, and not do a shit job, either.”

I heard Megan begin to draw in breath and responded quickly. “I’m sure we can manage,” I said, walking closer.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

I set my backpack on the counter, and had the other three women do the exact same thing, and also empty out their pockets. I could tell she wasn’t bluffing about the down payment. She must be desperate for supplies.

“You’ve got wounded?” I asked as I started pulling things out of my own pockets, and then my backpack.

“Yes. Any of you a doctor? A nurse?” Lisa replied, and I could tell she was trying to keep the hope , and desperation, out of her voice.

“No, unfortunately,” I replied.

“Well, one of you is going to have to help out there. Changing bandages and checking temperatures isn’t that hard.”

“Okay,” I replied.

It took half an hour, and Lisa basically cleaned us out. I let it happen, because I knew it was going to a good cause. She wasn’t just taking all our shit for the fun or greed of it, she needed this stuff and that was obvious.

All the spare guns went, and even some of the none spare ones. Delilah and Elizabeth both lost their sidearms. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t think they’d be heading out anytime soon. Whatever happened, they were staying in town for now. Megan and I both managed to hang onto a nine millimeter. I took the one that held twenty round mags, her the fifteen-round one. And we each managed one full load and one spare. We both kept our rifles, though we now only had ten bullets apiece.

I managed to hold onto my thermos and most of my other cooking supplies, some matches, a bit of basic medical stuff, and some of my personal grooming shit. We all were allowed to keep our thermal blankets and a single set of spare clothes. Delilah kept her novels. I made sure of that. But everything else went. All our food. All our other medicine and fire-starting gear. All our spare clothes, blankets, anything of any trade value, spare knives. My compass, my hand-crank flashlight. Delilah’s and Elizabeth’s backpacks even.

It was a tough trade, but it did get us something that I wasn’t actually sure we were going to get: a room to ourselves. I imagined space was at a premium now, and I wasn’t sure if it was my cooperation, Megan’s fuming, or something else, but Lisa seemed to ease up there near the end of the trade. When it was all said and done, and we all put what was left of our stuff back, Lisa seemed a lot less tense. She almost seemed kind.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you to where you’ll be living.”

With that, we headed back out into the cold.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (February 2021)

January was a difficult month.

I had a Covid scare at the very beginning of the month, and several people close to me actually did get it, but thankfully, they’re okay now and I somehow managed to dodge that bullet. I got a clear test last week and I don’t go out much as it is.

The past few months have been very emotionally unstable and tumultuous for me. Fuck, the past year basically was, but especially the past few months. I’ve obviously gone back and forth on a lot of things, and part of the reason for that was because I felt the need to make decisions that fell within certain boundaries. There were some things I wanted to do, but they felt too big, too difficult, or too intimidating.

January made me finally really sit down and rethink…just about everything.

I’ve made some decisions. Here is a shortlist of those decisions.

  • A WARM PLACE will continue unabated for now, although I’m no longer sure about this 1st of the month release dates. I will try for one a month though. Regardless, it remains my primary focus for the moment. In fact, you can read A Warm Place 2 right now!

  • LIKE A FINE WINE is going to end with the latest novel. If you haven’t already, please read this blog post explaining why. To be clear: With the release of Like A Fine Wine 4, and Like A Fine Wine - The Complete Series, the series is officially finished. However, at some point in the future, I do intend to do a sequel series.

  • The fantasy serial fiction I mentioned earlier is being put away for now. It isn’t the right time for it and based on the decisions I’ve made, it is no longer the right call to begin working on it anytime soon.

  • At some point in the future, ideally during 2021, but early 2022 for sure, I will be launching a new pen name, with two new series. I’ll elaborate on that below.

I’ve been considering the notion of starting a new pen name since before even Crystal Candy, probably sometime during 2018, or perhaps even late 2017. I had the idea that I needed something of a clean break from everything I’d done so far, to take everything I’d learned and apply it to a new name from the very beginning. And beginnings appeal to me, as well, like I imagine a blank canvas calls to artists.

Obviously, I gave it a shot with Crystal Candy, and ultimately canceled that side project, determining it made more sense to just write under Misty Vixen.

So what changed?

What truly got me started down the most recent path of this decision was A Warm Place. It…has not done as well as I’d hoped, and I’ll try to elaborate on how. It’ll take a moment to explain my thoughts on this particular subject.

In short, I feel as though there are, for lack of a better term, ‘levels’ to being an independent author. In the beginning, I was very lucky. Not long after I began publishing Hellcats and Wanderlust, I got to a decent level. I was actually selling. Nothing crazy, but definitely more than you would expect a brand new author with no advertising or social media presence to do. I worked very hard to keep at that level and although things got very dicey in 2016 and then EXTREMELY dicey in 2017 in terms of earnings, (looking back over my earnings for 2017, I’m shocked by how bad it got), I managed to stay at that level for 2015, 2016, & 2017.

In 2018, everything changed. I had been wanting to write novel-length stories almost from the beginning, but the urge certainly grew to intense proportions during 2017. In 2018, I managed to make the jump. As some of you may remember, while I saw an unprecedented leap in popularity, I also faced execution from Amazon’s firing squads, as they accused me of cheating and threatened me with account termination. Ultimately things settled down and although I lost a LOT of what I had gained during that brief surge in popularity, when the dust settled, I had just barely manage to rise to the next ‘level’. I was earning more comfortably, though still not quite as consistently. (One month could be great, and then the next the sales could drop by half for no obvious reason.)

Because I’m goal-oriented and because I have people in my life who need help and because I grew up in, shall we say, less than ideal financial circumstances, I’ve been really aiming for getting to the next level. I think I might actually be happy at that level of earning. I definitely wouldn’t be rich, but I would be more than comfortable and able to actually help people with big, unexpected bills or fill out entire GoFundMes of strangers or pay my mom’s house off or whatever the fuck. I know I’m very lucky to even be where I am right now, and I try not to take anything for granted, but it is very difficult to maintain gratitude when I see people who I am at least as good at in writing doing 50-100x better than me, out-earning me with fucking EASE, just shitting out novel after novel with no real effort.

But part of my ultimate goal isn’t just more money. I also want to be able to write less. It’s obvious to me that my work and my mental health suffers because I have to pump out a novel a month at minimum, and that’s very stressful. I’d love to be able to even ease that down to a novel every two months. Like, damn that’d be nice! That’d be a vacation. Although I’m sure because anxiety and depression are self-adjusting, I’d reach that, enjoy it for a bit, then start complaining that a novel every two months is too much! Being human fucking sucks.

Anyway. As I was saying in the beginning, when 2020 rolled around, I decided it was time to really get my shit together, get serious, and aim for that next level, in sales if not in output at least. A Warm Place was intended to be that. Although technically speaking A Warm Place might be my best launch ever, (barring the freak occurrence in mid-2018), it still did nowhere near as good as I had hoped. It didn’t catch fire, it didn’t take off, it’s just doing kind of well, and I’m sure that’s going to drop off at some point soon. And that just…crushed me. Like, I might have actually had a little bit of a mental breakdown there a few weeks ago.

It was a very, very emotionally dark time and given the fact that I already feel like a giant fucking failure half the time anyway, yeah, it was even worse than that.

I’m better now, and ultimately it led me to seriously reconsidering everything about my plans for the future.

Now, to address a few things.

The first is this: Why do I think a new name will work this time, when Crystal Candy did not? The answer is basically because I’ll be treating it in a fundamentally different way. Crystal Candy was intended, from the beginning, to be a quick, fun side project. This new name will become my new primary focus.

Which leads to the next obvious question: What will happen to Misty Vixen? I want to be clear on a few things about that. The first is that Misty Vixen will remain up and active. Nothing’s being taken down, nothing’s being abandoned or discontinued. Or, if something is discontinued, like Like A Fine Wine, it will be for its own reasons. I will continue writing for Misty Vixen once launching this new pen name, but at a slower pace. And because I’m hoping this new pen name will ultimately help take the pressure off, it means I can work on something even if it isn’t super financially viable. Like Demoness, for example. Or maybe I could expand The Pale Redhead into a complete novel, or trilogy, like I kind of have wanted to. Or other projects that I’ve considered and rejected or put aside because I simply don’t have the time.

I hope that puts everyone’s concerns to rest.

The next thing I want to address is: Why do I think this is a good idea? Here’s a few conclusions I came to, that were reconfirmed by stuff several of my readers have been telling me over the past year or so. (And some less than kind reviewers.)

  1. My tone as Misty Vixen is all over the place. What I wrote in 2015 is very different in some ways from what I am writing in 2021.

  2. My protagonists are almost anti-adventure/harem. This has been changing naturally as I’ve gotten the counterculture written out of my system and I’ve wanted to write more assertive and proactive protagonists, but I still have a good 40+ novels of awkward nerds, introverts, and indecisive young guys surrounded by older or much more confident women. While I don’t regret writing those stories or those characters, and I still like them, and even aspects of them, it’s obvious to me now that they’re working against me. If someone who might actually love A Warm Place or Haven discovers me through, say, Hellcats or Paranormal Passions, there’s a decent chance they’ll just decide they don’t like me and move on.

  3. I think there’s too much extra shit going on in how I present my work. Between the shared universes, the bonus stories, the collections and compilations and anthologies, the free website-exclusive stuff, the repackaging…it’s all too much. It’s clutter. I thought people would like it, like blu-ray extras or DLC, and while I have no doubt that there are some people who enjoy it, it’s become clear to me that for the most part, people just don’t care, and I could do away with it without a problem. This is more a problem on my end, as it takes up a lot of time and effort to make this stuff happen, but also it might be intimidating/irritating to see a massive list like what I’ve got on my Chronological Order page and just say ‘fuck it’. With a brand new pen name, I can make it much more simple and streamlined.

  4. Balance in telling my stories. Since the beginning, I’ve been experimenting in how I tell my stories, balancing sex, action, and character development on a sliding scale. Ultimately, I’ve leaned towards more action and characters, and less sex, and I’ve had more people telling me they like this. Honestly, I have found myself wanting more and more to write more plot-focused narratives. To put it in video game terms, I’ve been writing Minecraft stories, but I want to be writing Mass Effect stories. Open world, open-ended survival versus narrative-driven campaign. Open world is fun, but I think I like the campaigns better more often than not. I think Haven is the closest I’ve ever gotten to what I ultimately want to do, so imagine Haven, but with even more quality and focus.

I hope this explains it all. But the thing I want to emphasize the most is this: I AM NOT ABANDONING MY READERS. In short, if you like what I’m writing now, you’ll like what I write under this new pen name, and I will very clearly let anyone who cares to look know about this new material. It won’t be a secret or anything. I honestly believe that if you liked Haven, or the more narrative-focused aspects of my other stories, you will absolutely love the new ideas I have. (Hint: Remember that caveman story I’ve been hinting at for years? I’m finally going to do it and I think I have a really fun idea for it.)

What I truly want to get across is this: If you are already a fan of my work, I am positive you will continue to be a fan of the newer work. I’m not changing direction so much as refining my process, cutting out the bad and enhancing the good.

Another bottom line I want to get across is that I believe in hard work, but I also believe in effective hard work. I have spent years attempting to break down the barrier between this level and the next, but only recently have I truly come to realize that I’ve been using a spoon when I could have been using a pick-axe. This new pen-name is the pick-axe.

I’m hoping this doesn’t come across like some corporate damage control bullshit, because I hate that soulless, boilerplate BS. That whole ‘we hear you and we will do better going forward and we value your feedback’ fucking corporate spiel that sounds so fake.

I hope this does something to set your mind at ease. I know it’s helping me a lot. Ever since I began seriously considering it over the past few weeks, it was kind of like a weight was lifted, one that’s been there for probably over a year now, maybe longer. It was like: This is it. This is the thing that makes sense. This is the way forward.

I haven’t felt like that for a long time.

If you have any questions or comments or concerns, seriously let me know. Either in a comment down below, on Twitter, or an e-mail. I can always be reached at mistyvixen@outlook.com, and I will answer.

To all my readers, genuinely thank you for your support. It pretty much means the world.

A Warm Place 2 Preview

All right, since we’re nearing the release of A Warm Place 2, here is the preview! You can read the second chapter if you are a 1$/month Patron right here!

As far as the end of human civilization as we knew it was going, I had to admit, I was having a pretty good time.

We’d been on the highway for almost two days, and so far it had been a thankfully uneventful pair of days. After everything that had gone down over the past week, from my car crash, to the assault on not one but two different groups of armed and dangerous assholes, to the handful of encounters I’d had with dangerous wildlife (my arm still hurt from that fucking wolf), uneventful was not just good, it was welcome.

Although I had started the trip with some uncertainty and anxiety brewing in my head and my gut over that last conversation I’d had with Tanner, I was able to pull myself into a better mood before too long. Between having two very attractive and friendly women that I had already been intimate with and would continue to do so around, and engaging in one of my favorite activities, (hitting the open road after a stay in one place), it was easy to prop myself back up with all those feel-good chemicals. And I’d managed to maintain it for all of yesterday and most of today.

Though like the setting sun, with nightfall scheduled for the very near future, I could feel bad vibes darkening my own emotional horizons.

I tried to tell myself to get over it, but that had a low chance of being successful.

Presently, as we walked down the highway, which was mostly clean and clear, topped with a layer of snow that crunched under our boots, I studied my traveling companions.

Delilah was the kind of girl who looked good regardless of what she was doing. I mean, personally, I thought they were both like that, but Delilah was what you would call ‘photogenic’. Dressed up in her faded bluejeans (that she’d since repaired), a gray, ragged hoodie, and a white beanie that she’d found in one of the many abandoned cars we stopped to search, she looked great. She looked like a model on her way to one of those fucking ‘ironic’ photoshoots, the kind intended to sell ‘pre-faded’ or ‘pre-ripped’ brand new jeans for two hundred fucking dollars to dipshits. Her vividly red hair peeked out here and there from beneath her cap, her vibrant blue eyes seemed to spark in the fading sunlight, and her pale, pale face was still smoothly beautiful despite the exposure to frigid weather. Some people are just born traditionally beautiful, and Delilah was one of them. I was very lucky that she was riding my dick twice a day.

Megan was the opposite of Delilah in several ways. Where Delilah was trim and petite, Megan was taller and more filled out, more built. She probably had a good five inches and twenty five pounds on the redhead. Decked out in some brown cargo pants, heavy hiking boots, and a thick gray jacket over a hoodie, she looked a lot more...aggressive. Everything about Megan was aggressive. The way she walked, the way she talked, her stance and expressions. We had more in common, I had to admit. I wouldn’t call Delilah timid, exactly, but she was definitely a lot more submissive. Megan was a lot more assertive.

Her tan skin sported more scars than Delilah’s, and her black hair, cut shorter than Delilah’s own red hair, was often worn in a rough, short ponytail. She also had on a black beanie, just like me. Her angry brown eyes were distant often when I glanced at her, and I wondered what she was thinking about. Probably nothing good.

Tragedy had befallen pretty much everyone since the snow began, but some of us had been hit a lot harder than others.

And some of us had always dealt with it.

Megan had had a hard life, from the bits and pieces I’d gathered from her so far. She was a hard woman, consequently.

Something that drew me intensely to her.

I was also extremely lucky that she had agreed to let me stick my dick in her.

There had been some tension between the two of them when they’d first met, pretty much exclusively coming from Megan, given she was jealous of Delilah’s natural charisma and uncomfortable, if not outright hostile towards the idea that Delilah had agreed to have sex with me in exchange for my protection and getting her somewhere safe. If we didn’t get along so well, I would have thought Megan might have a point, but thankfully it was turning out that Delilah liked me so much, it almost seemed like the ‘deal’ was an excuse to fuck me immediately. Not that she really needed one.

Delilah was a fucking supermodel to me.

But another problem that I thought would manifest had yet to. Although I think most reasonable people know that despite the fact that we think we can predict a lot of outcomes, the nature of individuality and, well, being a human, means that things can often go in a different direction, I was also a little interested to see if Delilah might not take at least a little offense that I...well, preferred Megan.

It wasn’t intentional, and it wasn’t like I was trying to snub Delilah. It was more just the way it had fallen. Megan happened to hit more of my buttons than Delilah. And it wasn’t even like I thought there should be conflict there.

Honestly, I was happier when everyone got along, and I hated anyone hurting or feeling left out.

Despite that, there was a part of me that assumed Delilah would be maybe a little offended that I preferred Megan to her, given that, by most accounts, Delilah was more ‘conventionally’ attractive, whereas Megan didn’t seem to give much of a shit if she was attractive or not. (Or, at least, she tried to hide it. I think it bothered her how much she gave a shit about being attractive she still gave. Honestly, I could sympathize.)

But Delilah seemed as happy as ever.

Which made me curious. It could be that she just hadn’t picked up on it. Or it could be that she just didn’t care.

Sometimes, though, if someone didn’t care about something, it was because something else that was more important to them had overridden it.

Maybe she just didn’t care because she was happy about another thing.

And that’s what I’d been teasing out all day long, in my head at least: what was she happy about? Finally, I had come to a conclusion.

She was happy we were going to that town she’d asked me to take her to.

It was the basis of our relationship, personal and business, and she seemed fairly particular about getting to, specifically, this one town.

Which made me wonder…

“Delilah.”

“Yeah?” she asked, glancing at me.

“I was curious...is there a specific reason we’re going to this town?” I asked.

A look of anxiety passed over her face that she tried to control, which was interesting.

“Yeah, where are we going? I just realized I’ve never actually, like, asked,” Megan said.

“It’s called Pine Lake, small place,” she replied, not quite looking at either of us.

I waited. Then, “Delilah...is there something you’re not telling me?”

Megan glanced over, suddenly intrigued.

Delilah hesitated, then sighed, her breath puffing on the air. “Kinda.”

“What, you got a boyfriend waiting for you up there? I bet that’d be awkward given what we’ve been doing with you,” Megan said, grinning.

“No! Not a boyfriend. My friend. She’s a girl. We always said...we’d meet there, if things got really bad. You know how like you think about the end of the world or the collapse of civilization and sometimes with your best friends you say ‘if it all goes to hell, we’ll meet up and stick together’? Well, we really had a plan. Like we actually talked about it. And it got more serious the worse the weather was getting. She moved away a year before everything went to hell. Her boyfriend at the time got some job in a town that was kinda close to Pine Lake. So...I’m hoping she’s waiting there for me.”

“It’s been two years,” Megan murmured.

Delilah sighed. “I know, I know...I was scared to go out for a long time. I kept thinking ‘maybe this’ll get better’ or ‘she probably is somewhere else’ but finally I just said ‘fuck it’ and started heading that way. I’ve made a lot of progress…”

“Why were you worried about this?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“I’m not...sure. I guess it’s really close to my heart, and I like you a lot, like a lot, but...I’m...I don’t intend to, like, stay with you, or anything. Once I final Lindsay, you know, I’m sticking with her. And I guess I was worried you might change your mind if you knew that.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Delilah,” I replied. “A deal’s a deal. And you’ve more than held up your end. As long as you don’t actively fuck me over, I’ll get you there. And if your friend isn’t there, I’d probably be willing to help you track her down.”

“Really?” she asked, looking at me with a renewed enthusiasm.

“Yeah. Believe it or not, I like you a lot, too.”

“And here I thought all you two had was hate sex,” Megan murmured.

“No, that’s just you and me,” I replied, and she laughed.

A few seconds of silence went by. “So you’ll take care of me?” Delilah asked quietly.

“Yes,” I replied. “That’s what I told you. You don’t have to worry about that.”

She gave me a small smile. “You did come for us.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I replied. I’d probably said that a dozen times now. Although that last conversation I’d had with that fucking asshole was messing with me in a more abstract way, the other thing was messing with me in a bigger, more obvious way: I hadn’t been there. I’d been off getting my dick sucked and they’d gotten-

“Chris,” Megan said, interrupting my thoughts. I glanced over. “We’ve been over this: you told us exactly where you were going, gave us a chance to ask you to say. We knew the risk. It turned out for the best. The assholes are dead. It’s fine. We’ve forgiven you for what happened. Don’t keep beating yourself up over it.”

“Yeah,” I managed. It was going to fuck with me for awhile, but she was right.

I could sense she wanted to ask me about what had gone down after she’d left. They must have heard some of it, or even if they hadn’t, she must have been wondering what had taken so long after she and Delilah had left the room. I hadn’t said anything yet, and I think at least Megan could tell that something had happened and it was bothering me. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to talk with either of them about it.

Fuck, I hadn’t even written about it in my journal. I’d written about pretty much everything else that had happened…

Just not that.

My journal. Heh. What all this had been about.

That still seemed kind of unreal to me. Intellectually, I was aware of how one change could lead to a vast array of changes. But actually experiencing it was still weird. If I hadn’t crashed, I wouldn’t have met these two women. Fuck, Delilah almost certainly would have just frozen to death right there on that cabin floor, and Megan...might have escaped. Or might have provoked one of those shitheads into killing her.

I guess it was more about the crash than the journal, but then my obsessive nature about getting the damned thing back had put me on the path to Tanner.

I still don’t know precisely what it was about that fucking conversation, but I know it had done something to me. Was it bad? Good? Or neither? I think some of it was that he was the first person I’d ever come across who had tried to basically use me to commit suicide...again, as far as I knew. A few people had just come at me, no words, no warning, just whackjobs in the woods that I figured were looking to kill and rob me.

No, I needed to stop poking at this, stop thinking about it.

Just focus on something else.

Well, on the plus side, I’d met Hazel, and damn if she wasn’t one of the best lays I’d had. I knew older women could fuck but wow had she been something else. I missed her, though thankfully in just a sexual way. Maybe that sounded really shallow or callous, but I think it was for the best I didn’t miss her emotionally, because we were almost certainly never going to see each other again. We’d just bumped into each other, so to speak, and now we had long since drifted apart. I was northbound on a highway, she was living happily in an isolated lake house. Though I felt bad for her that she didn’t have someone around to fuck her.

Maybe she’d find someone.

Thinking about that was, admittedly, turning my mind to more carnal desires. I was finding myself really wanting a threesome with Delilah and Megan. I actually hadn’t had too many in my life before meeting them. The few I’d had were one-off situations. But now I was traveling with not one but two attractive and very willing women. Delilah was just straight-up super sexual, and Megan, after some hesitation, was comfortable enough with the two of us that she didn’t mind responding fully to that sexuality.

And, well, obviously I was just fucking horny most the time.

That thought spurred another: we should really find a place to bunk down for the night. If at all possible, I always tried to sleep indoors. I no longer had a tent with me and even if I did, and even as much as I’d enjoyit...it would be a tight fit with three of us. Especially with my big six foot two, bulky-build ass.

“It’s starting to get late,” I said, pausing. We were in the middle of the highway. There was pretty much nothing but plains, lots of frozen plains off to the left, and it had been that way for awhile. To the right, though, were some signs of civilization. “We should find a place for the night.”

“It would be nice,” Megan said, and yawned, then popped her back. “Fuck, I’m tired.”

I nodded and walked off to the right guardrail. Walking all day was really tiring. Walking all day in the snow, even on a relatively flat surface like a highway, was really tiring. I’d tried not to push too hard, but I did want to make meaningful progress with the good days that we had. A blizzard could blow in and last three days pretty unexpectedly. Even some shitty snowy weather could ruin a whole day of progress, and it wasn’t like we were making a lot of progress. We’d probably made it fifteen miles so far, what with the stops to search cars, breaks to keep frostbite and hypothermia at bay, and to eat meals.

Plus, we’d slept in this morning, and I intended to tomorrow too. It wasn’t like we were on some tight timeline. Delilah seemed happy enough that we were just moving towards the settlement and so long as we didn’t take a month to do it, I imagined she’d be okay with it. I figured we’d be there inside of two weeks, provided we didn’t run into any problems. Though that was a big ‘if’ given the shitty nature of the world now.

So far, we hadn’t seen any other people on the road yet, and any wildlife we’d seen had been from a comfortable distance.

That could change quickly.

Getting up to the guardrail I was glad to see immediately that there was a house off a little ways that looked small but intact. Thankfully, in this area the highway was basically level with the road. Although unfortunately that was good and bad. The house was a pretty obvious target. But that was always a risk, and anyway, few people traveled at night and we weren’t going to be there for more than a night anyway.

“We’ll try there,” I said.

“What if someone’s there already?” Delilah murmured.

“Well, either we’ll barter with them for a place to sleep, they’ll try to kill us and I’ll have to kill them, or we’ll move on. There’s some cars down the way there,” I said, pointing maybe a mile on down the highway, “we’ll camp in one of them if we have to.”

“Fun, fun,” Megan muttered, and hopped the guardrail. “Let’s go, I’m starving and horny.”

“Same,” I said, jumping the guardrail as well and then turning to help Delilah over if she wanted. She did and I took her hand. She didn’t let go after stepping over and so we held hands as we started walking through the snow towards the house.

After a moment, Megan took my other hand.

I couldn’t help but smile.

Definitely, it’s the little things that can be great sometimes.

I Made A Difficult Call

Hey. So, let me just get the suspenseful part out of the way right now.

I have decided to close out Like A Fine Wine with the fourth novel, and I am sorry.

The primary reason I’m doing this isn’t because of sales or money. I know I’ve complained about it a few times, but that isn’t it. The reason is because I just am not enjoying writing it. Like, at all.

Originally, I intended there to be six novels, and I had a rough idea for each novel. Although I managed to write the first two novels without too much trouble, what I’d call maybe the regular amount of doubt for a novel, (every author goes through varying levels of ‘is this terrible?’ or ‘I’m so sick of this can I work on something else PLEASE?’), the third novel was tough. Very tough. Although I got through it, it was extremely difficult to find the motivation to write. I came to dread it each time I went to work on it. I thought it was a product of my stress, depression, and anxiety, all of which spiked near the last quarter of 2020. And although certainly those things were not helping, I can tell now that it wasn’t just me, it was also the story.

Because after a break, I got to work on Like A Fine Wine 4 and almost immediately ran into the same problem. It’s been very tough and I hate to admit that my heart just isn’t in it. As I began approaching the end of Like A Fine Wine 4, I initially resolved to wrap the series up with a fifth novel, but even the thought of that feels impossible to me right now. Even if I were to take a hiatus from the book and come back to it later, I’m confident it wouldn’t matter. I’d have just as much difficulty in April or September as I would right now.

So I’m going to wrap it up with this fourth novel.

I am genuinely sorry. If it was different, if I was feeling neutral towards it or even just kind of bad, I’d push on, but that just isn’t the case. It’s become obvious to me that working on the series is really clogging me up creatively and draining me emotionally. It’s so hard to work on other material because I know I’ll have to go back to writing something I just do not want to write. There have been times in the past when I’ve pushed on with certain projects no matter how bad they made me feel, no matter how unreasonable it seemed, and I feel like I’ve almost always suffered when I’ve chosen to push past the breaking point. I’ve had to make a few tough choices before, like ending Paranormal Passions and Valkyries at three stories instead of going on like I originally intended, or canceling Women of the Wild, or leaving Adventurous as a single novel instead of making it into a series.

I don’t know what else to say, really. I know some of you were really looking forward to more, and the only solace I have to give you is that, at some point in the future, I do still intend to write a follow-up series with Jack and a few others.

I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’ll understand if you’re upset.

I’m going to try and have Like A Fine Wine 4 finished up relatively soon, then the Complete Series will go up.

Again, I am sorry. I wish it could have gone differently, but the very second I asked myself ‘What if I stopped at book four?’, something inside immediately went ‘That is the correct thing to do’.

I did get a fifth cover made, and I’ll release it soon so everyone can see it.

Like A Fine Wine 4 Preview

Okay, I’m finally on the home stretch of Like A Fine Wine 4. I’m hoping to have it wrapped up before the end of the month, but my mental state has been unfortunately very unpredictable the past few weeks. Either way, here is the preview.

If you want to see Chapters 01 & 02, check out my Patreon.

Jack came awake slowly, aware that someone was talking.

“...no, it’ll be fine...yes, I promise.” A sigh. “Lyra, it’s a guarantee...yes, I already asked him, he really likes you...oh my God, Lyra, stop it! You’re being ridiculous...no, he’s asleep right now...yes, it’ll be-okay, good. Just...I promise, you’ll have a great time.”

Elizabeth was whispering, but Jack was getting the impression that she didn’t have a great concept of what whispering actually meant.

When he heard the very soft chime of a radio being turned off, he asked, “What was that all about?”

Elizabeth jumped slightly, then sighed heavily. “You were awake.”

“You woke me,” he murmured, fully opening his eyes and rolling over. She was sitting on the side of the bed, naked, looking pretty great, even just from the back.

Well, especially from the back.

“Sorry,” she said. “Lyra. She’s nervous about sleeping with you.”

“She shouldn’t be,” he replied, then yawned and sat up. Stretching, he popped his neck, then his back, rolled his shoulders.

Elizabeth had gone hard on him last night.

“I agree, but Lyra’s just...an anxious woman. I think she knows it’ll be fine, anxiety is just reflexive for her at this point.”

“Could it be she doesn’t want to? I don’t want to make her uncomfortable…”

Elizabeth smiled. “Trust me, she wants to. We’ve...spoken. More than once. She really wants to. And she’s going to. She’s just...never been good with this kind of thing. She’s awkward. But she’s, well, prepared for it.”

“Prepared how? You say that with some significance,” he replied, intrigued.

“You’ll see.”

“Oh. All right.” He smiled and slid closer to her back, reaching around and cupping her huge, pale breasts in his hands while beginning to kiss the back of her neck.

She gasped softly and shuddered, then groaned. He paused. It sounded like an unhappy groan. Reaching up, she pulled his hands gently from her breasts. “Not right now.”

“Why?!” he moaned, falling back onto the bed, exasperated and horny but not prepared to actually argue with her if she was saying no.

“Trust me, I want to. Badly. In fact, I intend to go have sex with Riley or Sylvia soon…”

“What the fuck!?”

“You need to put a moratorium on sex until you hook up with Lyra,” Elizabeth said firmly. She stood and began pulling on her workout clothes.

“What is it with you women and these fucking moratoriums?” he growled.

“Hey, have we been wrong?” she shot back, turning to look at him.

He sighed heavily. “No. The sex is better if I wait for it. Just...it’s frustrating! Especially after all the fucking we’ve been doing.”

She smiled and reached down and patted his leg. “I promise I’ll make it up to you after you’ve hooked up with Lyra. Just think of the threesomes we’ll have.”

“When will she hook up with me? I’ll be honest, I can wait, but not that long.”

“You are such a fucking addict.”

“Oh like you aren’t. And come on! I’m around six insanely attractive women, five of whom are highly sexual and fucking me every day for weeks now.”

“Fair enough,” she said, relenting. “Today. I’m confident it will be today. Let’s go workout and get our shower in so we can have our morning meeting. I believe Maureen has some information for us regarding our next course of action.”

He just grunted and got up.

As Jack began his morning routine, first pissing and then brushing his teeth and then pulling on his own workout attire, he thought about the recent past.

It had been three days since Riley had come rescued them from the canyon. Although it hadn’t been as harrowing, (mostly), as the last two times they’d gotten themselves into a bad situation, Jack was pretty happy to just relax with Elizabeth and fuck her brains out as often as she’d let him. And that was mostly what they had done: fucked, slept, worked out a few times, and had pleasant meals. They helped with the cosmetic repairs but there was even less of a sense of urgency at getting them done than there had been before, that is to say hardly any. If anything, Maureen seemed keen on them slowing it down for the moment.

He was getting the impression that she was enjoying the working vacation and the downtime, possibly more than she realized she would, and wanted to extend it. He knew how she felt. This place was nice, the work was nice, the people were nice, obviously. Although more and more recently he was feeling that sort of itch that he’d lost over his last year of service. The call of adventure. Jack was realizing now more than ever that he’d been depressed, and depression was...many things. But in his case it had been a sort of blanket.

It had blanked out or muted most of his other emotions.

Namely: his enjoyment of going to new places, seeing new things, meeting new people and, maybe most of all, doing crazy or exciting shit.

The canyon and the scorpions had been frightening and dangerous, but also very exciting.

He was surprised to realize that he wanted more.

Maybe not more super extreme life-threatening stuff, but more adventure.

Jack finished dressing for the workout and joined Elizabeth in their gym. It was tough focusing, because oh good lord did she look so good and he wanted her so fucking bad, but he managed to get through the workout with too much difficulty. He finally went back to his own quarters and showered alone. He’d had a lot of sex with Elizabeth recently, and he had the idea neither of them intended to stop anytime soon.

Well, besides the pause she’d put on their sex life.

As he got dressed, he heard her and Riley shouting in sexual ecstasy and groaned. It was crazy how much he wanted to run in there and join them, or even just go hop in bed with any of the others. They’d almost certainly agree to it...although maybe they wouldn’t. Elizabeth seemed intent on her assertion that Lyra would jump him soon, and if she thought so, certainly all the others would, too. And they’d probably agree with her assessment that he should stop fucking until she was ready to take her clothes off with him.

How fucking ridiculous it was that being able to practically constantly satisfy his lust had done nothing to sate it.

It just made it worse.

Although it was probably good for the women, given there were six of them and one of him. They had each other, for sure, but they also had brought him along for a reason. And he fully intended to fulfill that reason to the best of his ability.

Promising himself that sex with Lyra was going to be stellar when it happened, and worth the wait, Jack finished dressing and headed for breakfast.

Everyone but Elizabeth and Riley were already around the table, eating. Lyra looked up as soon as he came in and immediately looked back down at her food.

She had still been awkward as hell around him.

Hopefully that would end today.

He grabbed his meal and sat down. Digging in, as he was hungry, he didn’t get a chance to talk before Elizabeth and Riley finally came in.

“Took you long enough,” Maureen said.

“We were busy,” Riley replied flippantly.

“Mmm-hmm. I’m ready to talk about our situation,” Maureen said.

Elizabeth and Riley quickly grabbed their own meals and joined them at the table. Maureen immediately shifted into what he had come to recognize as her business mode. It must be one of the places she flourished: leading a meeting or just talking to a group of people in general. He thought she was a natural at it, but she also had decades of experience by now.

“So, we’ve been discussing finding new contracts for awhile now. Since we all agreed that we would enjoy it, I have found what I believe to be a fair compromise between our various wants. Some of us want to hang around here, continue working on the outpost at our leisure, and do an occasional job here or there, some of us...want something a bit more.”

“Fucking adrenaline junkie,” Riley muttered with a smirk, looking at Elizabeth.

“Give me a break. How many times have you fucked in public?” she shot back.

“Focus,” Maureen said, and both women fell silent. “So I’ve picked up a few additional contracts in this region that we can complete at our leisure, and I’ve also managed to locate a small cluster of them in a region far to the north of here. Based on all the available evidence, I believe it would make the most sense for Jack, Elizabeth, and Lyra to take the shuttle, and the rover, and use the shuttle as a mobile base. How do you feel about this?”

“I’m game,” Elizabeth replied immediately.

“Yeah, me too,” Jack agreed.

They looked at Lyra, who squirmed under their gazes. “I...uh…” She seemed to steel herself suddenly and looked up, her glowing white eyes focusing on them. “Yes. I want to do this.”

“Good!” Maureen replied, looking genuinely pleased. “I’ve found you three contracts. The first is to recover data from a downed atmospheric probe. The second is to grab the inventory and perform a visual inspection of a rental storage facility. The third one is a bit grimmer: recovering any available data, and corpses, from a failed colony. But I figured you’d appreciate the opportunity, given it will offer closure, potentially, to several families.”

“I’m always up for that,” Elizabeth said.

“So, we’re all in agreement then?” Maureen asked, looking around the table. Jack, Elizabeth, and Lyra all confirmed that they were ready and willing to do this. “Excellent. I will download all the relevant data to the three of you and when you’re ready, you can begin the process of packing for the trip and preparing the shuttle.”

“I’d like your help with that, Riley,” Lyra said.

“Can do,” Riley replied.

“And I’d like you to eyeball the medical crap, Sylvia,” Elizabeth said.

“Obviously. You three would be in a lot of trouble otherwise,” Sylvia replied with a smirk.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh.”

Jack glanced at Lyra. He noticed her looking at him, but as soon as his eyes met hers, she immediately looked back down at her food.

This was going to be interesting.

…

It took longer than he assumed it would to get ready.

Or maybe that was just his perception. Jack was getting antsy, and not just because he was horny and none of them would have sex with him even if he asked. They all did indeed agree with Elizabeth’s philosophy of waiting, as he had casually broached the topic with all four of the other women, and they had promptly shut him down. Though he could tell they felt bad for him. He thought Riley came close to trying to jump him.

No, there was another reason he was anxious.

Lyra.

Of all the women he had been with, she was the most intimidating. Although that could simply be the fact that she was the only one he hadn’t seen naked or been intimate with yet. In their own way, they had all been intimidating, some a lot more than others. Riley and Anya were casual and sexual enough that whatever anxiety he’d felt had pretty quickly been put at ease. Maureen and, to a lesser extent, Sylvia really exuded that ‘mature cougar’ persona that was not unlike a teacher or a boss. They just had an air of authority.

And, obviously, Elizabeth had produced worry in him. Honestly, she still did. But even with Elizabeth he had a connection there with the shared history of being a Marine. They got each other on a level none of the others quite did.

But Lyra was just…

Different, somehow.

She seemed apart from the group, in her own class, maybe. He wasn’t sure what it was about her. She was confident, or, at the very least, he had seen flashes of confidence from her. When it came to technical expertise she was one of the most competent and confident women he’d encountered. And over the past few weeks, when they’d been talking off and on, she’d seemed to relax and open up to him. Then she’d snapped back shut again, right when she’d seen that picture he’d taken. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that.

As he prepared for the coming trip, Jack resolved to talk to her on the flight out there. She’d be piloting, but autopilot would handle almost all of the actual flight, and Elizabeth would probably be happy if they got things sorted out between them.

So he prepared. He took a look over his suit of armor and his weapons, bringing his pistol, the assault rifle he’d grown a bit fond of over the past several weeks, and a short-barreled shotgun that packed quite a punch. After running into the scorpions, he wanted something that had more of a kick. Something that could fucking demolish a monster with the pull of a trigger, but that didn’t actually explode. It took almost two hours to disassemble, clean, inspect, and reassemble all that gear, but it helped calm him and pass the time.

He packed the armor carefully in one crate, and placed the rifle and shotgun in a long gun case with a padded interior, then loaded up on magazines and shells. He also snagged a dozen grenades, mostly fragmentation, with a few high explosives for good measure, and secured them as well. After that he packed himself half a dozen changes of uniforms and underclothes, and an extra set of boots, just in case, and finally made sure that his photography editing software and all his photos were still synced to his suit’s database, as well as the library of digital books he’d been slowly working his way through.

As he finished all this up, Elizabeth came into his room.

“Done packing?” she asked.

“Yeah, how’s it going out there?” he replied.

“I’ve packed mine and Lyra’s armor and arsenals, and I just got done checking over our emergency medical stash. It all looks good. I figured you’d want to pack your own arsenal and I thought I’d do a little inspection.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, a small smile on her face, “you wouldn’t take offense to that, would you?”

“Please, be my guest,” he replied, sweeping a hand towards his bed, where all his gear was packed up in crates.

She walked over and opened up the gun case, studying the contents.

“Of course,” he said, getting up behind her and settling his hands on her big ass, “I might like to do an inspection of my own.”

He felt a tremor run through her body. “You know we can’t do anything now. For Lyra’s sake,” she murmured quietly, like she was having a hard time focusing.

He couldn’t help but smile. “I didn’t say anything about ‘doing anything’,” he replied, and ran his hands slowly around to her broad hips. She began to say something, but he slid one hand forward and rested it on her crotch, between her thick thighs.

“You were saying?” he asked.

She exhaled sharply and shuddered again. “We should stop,” she whispered.

“You want me to? I will. Just say the word,” he replied, his hands hesitating.

She paused for several long seconds. “...no,” she murmured.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you.”

“Don’t stop, you fucker!” she snapped.

He laughed and brought his hands up, cupping her breasts, feeling them through the fabric of her uniform. She was breathing more heavily now. Jack began running his fingers over her nipples, which he could feel even more through the fabric, and her breath caught. He was hard as a rock now and knew this was a stupid idea because all this lust had nowhere to go and the only thing this was doing was building up useless horniness and making both of them risk saying ‘fuck it’ and fucking like crazy. Elizabeth had a lot of discipline, but did she have enough?

“Jack…” she whispered.

“Yeah?” he murmured.

“Maybe we could...just do it once.”

Apparently not. Interesting. Not that he could talk, he was ready to pull his cock out and go to town on her, but he was admittedly impressed with himself that he turned her on enough to get her to give in.

“Maybe,” he said. Then he stopped, knowing that if he didn’t stop right now, he wouldn’t stop. Neither of them would. “No.” He took a step back and heard her exhale sharply. “We shouldn’t. Lyra’s going to want my full attention.”

Elizabeth growled and stood facing away from him for a moment, rigid and ramrod straight. Then she turned around. “If you knew that, why the fuck did you get me going?” she growled, somewhere between frustrated, aroused, and actually angry.

“I guess I wanted to see if you’d actually be willing to,” he admitted.

She sighed. “You are a fuck, you know that?”

“Can you blame me? I mean, come on, even you can recognize the ego boost of knowing that you have the capacity to turn on someone who’s not just really fucking attractive but really fucking badass so much that they can’t help but give in.”

She stared at him for another long moment, then issued a sharp laugh and shook her head. “Yeah, fine. I’ll give you that.”

“Well, I imagine you’ll want to go use Riley to get off now,” he said.

“I want to but...no. You know what? I’m going to save it, too. After Lyra’s had you, I get you and I’m not fucking letting go until I’m done with you tonight, understand?”

“...what does that mean, exactly?”

“I guess you’ll find out,” she replied with a coy smirk, and she walked out of his room.

Well, great. What had he gotten himself into, exactly?

…

After another few hours of double-checking their gear and finishing running maintenance on the shuttle and the rover, as they were bringing both, and finally attaching one of the two huge converted cargo containers, they were done.

From how Elizabeth explained it, the two massive cargo containers they had brought down could be slung under the wings of the shuttle, and would act basically like expansions. Functionally speaking, they were survival shelters, though they had been decked out, obviously, given the nature of the trip. One of them would be able to handle the three of them without too much trouble, in terms of space. A lot of stuff folded up into the walls or ceiling.

Finally, after a lunch break and one more round of checking everything out, they were off. Lyra settled into the cockpit and ran through the pre-flight checklist while Jack and Elizabeth took a seat in the seating compartment and buckled up. After fifteen minutes, they were off, rising into the air, aiming north, and shooting off into the horizon.

“You should go talk with Lyra,” Elizabeth said.

“You think so?” he replied.

“Yeah. I think she wants to talk, but she doesn’t quite want to initiate it. Plus, she’s most comfortable in the cockpit, I think. Give her time and keep things calm, but be direct with her, and you’ll both do fine,” Elizabeth said.

He nodded, unbuckled, and stood up. Behind Elizabeth’s head he could see the landscape disappearing beneath them as they rose to a suitable height. He opened up the door to the cockpit and stood in the door.

“Hi, Lyra,” he said, and she jumped slightly, turning to look at him in her seat. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Can I join you?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m on autopilot now.”

As he came in and closed the door behind him, she turned the seat around and looked at him. Her glowing white gaze seemed intense.

Okay, he thought, slow, calm, but direct.

“Lyra,” he said, “I wanted to discuss, uh...well, our intended sexual interaction.”

“Okay,” she replied, nodding. “I want to talk about it. I’m sorry I haven’t, you know, said anything. Or done anything. And that I’ve been so weird.”

“It’s really fine,” he said, he looked around, suddenly wanting to sit.

Lyra seemed to pick up on that immediately. “Sorry, it’s just the one chair...we could both sit on the floor,” she suggested.

“If you’d be comfortable with that.”

She nodded and stood, then sat down with her back to a console to his left. He moved to the right and sat down opposite her.

“I’ve sat on enough floors in my life,” she said.

“Me too.” He paused. “The first thing I want to get across is that I’m not upset, or irritated, in any way. I’m still completely comfortable with going at whatever pace you want to set, and I’m also comfortable if you’ve decided you don’t want to do it. I don’t want you to feel pressured in any way. Okay?”

She smiled. “I really appreciate that. I’m still certain that it’s a yes from my end. Honestly, I promised myself I was finally going to directly talk about this with you on the way out here, so I’m glad you came in. So...I want to have sex with you. Tonight. Honestly, I want to have sex with you as soon as we land and get everything set up. I want to fuck you like two or three times. I want to suck your dick and taste you. I want to fucking ride you like crazy and squirt all over you. I want-” she paused, breathing more heavily now, then laughed softly. “Well, let’s just say that I want a lot of things tonight. And from now on.”

“Great,” he replied. Already, he had a hard-on just thinking about fucking her tight little brains out. She looked fantastic, sitting there with one leg stretched out, the other drawn up, one elbow resting on the raised knee, an awkward smile on her pale face. “I was curious…”

“Yeah?”

“I guess two things. The first is: do you have a specific reason for being so hesitant? Second, why did you like...lose the ability to look at me or really talk to me after I showed you that picture I’d taken?” he asked.

She laughed quietly and looked away for a few seconds. “Sorry...I just…” She looked down at the floor now and sighed. “Where to begin?” Her eyes came back up. “I’m awkward. I’m sure you’ve heard the word a lot from the others when they’re talking about me. And they’re right. I don’t think I’ve very good at social interactions, most other people make me feel weird and nervous and anxious. I’ve gotten way better at it over the decades, but for whatever reason I’m stuck with it. Sex is...weird. For me. For two reasons. Well, I guess three, one of which we just covered. The second is my family and society. Probably no surprise, but xenians are weirdly conservative about sex. Especially interspecies sex.

“And, lo and behold, I was into other species. Like a lot. And bisexual. But the other problem that’s cropped up over the past twenty years or so is that my sexdrive has dropped off a lot. I think some of it is just my personality and the way I live my life, but I know it’s a thing that can happen to a lot of xenians. Humans too, from what I’ve heard. I mean, I’ve had sex and relationships before, casual and a couple more serious ones, but ultimately it all fell away and I kind of just focused on my job.” She frowned, momentarily becoming lost in thought.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, not sure what else to say.

She shook her head, focusing on him again. “No, it’s fine, really. I was happy with it. I am honestly. I love taking things apart, fixing things. I’ll be happy to go on doing it for another half century and beyond. But anyway, about your other question. It boils down to: I really like you. I haven’t been attracted to someone like you in a long time. Like, thirty years or more. When we met, it woke up my lust, though it was still subdued. When I went on this trip, I knew exactly what I was in for, and that I’d want to enjoy it. So I got some supplements. Basically, they kickstart xenians female sexdrives. I’ve been taking them in tiny doses over the past week or so, as I kept putting it off. But that day I realized you’re actually into taking pictures…

“It was a triple threat. First, I was already super into you. Second, I had just doubled my dosage that day. Three, and this is the big one: I am so into creative types. Some people go for strength, some for looks, some for wit, I just...fucking love creative type guys. And girls. Writers, artists...photographers. That picture evoked an emotional response, an intense one, and that’s basically like a mainline of lust. It was...overwhelming. It kind of freaked me out, how much I wanted you. I almost propositioned you to fuck me literally right then and there on the table.”

He laughed. “My God, would they have loved that.”

She laughed as well. “Yeah, they would have. I didn’t though, because I was kind of intimidated by the sheer magnitude of how horny I was. I told myself I needed time to sort it out, which was convenient, because you and Elizabeth were clearly very busy with each other. So...that’s it. My biggest turn-on is artistic people, especially ones who are really good at it or…” she paused, reconsidering. “I guess not necessarily that they’re really good at it, but more that they care about it. You can look at it or read it or experience it and just feel how much the person cared. And that’s what I felt about you. And, well, I was already so into you that it just intensified it so much. So yes, that’s why I kind of regressed and acted so weird.”

“I guess...good for me?” Jack replied uncertainly, making her laugh again.

“Yeah, good for you,” she agreed. She paused, studying him for a long moment, like she was trying to weigh something, if she should tell him or not, or maybe what words to use. Finally, she seemed to decide to plunge forward. “So, um, I want to make sure we’re absolutely on the same page here. Because I’ve come to learn that I’m bad at social cues, especially across cultural boundaries. I want to fuck you. Really bad. And I intend to. Within the next few hours. Like, soon. Do you feel basically the same way about me?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Unequivocally.”

She let out something that was part nervous laugh, part sigh of relief. “Oh good. I’m glad. Also, I’ve done all the research and there’s no reason not to, uh...you know, we don’t have to, um-we can go bareback.”

“That’s good to know,” he replied, trying not to smile.

He thought he was awkward, but Lyra was on a different level. She looked at him for another moment longer, then abruptly got up. “I should keep watch over the cockpit. Just in case. Um...I’ll talk more about this after we land and get set up.”

“Okay, Lyra,” he replied, getting up. He paused. “Can I kiss you on the cheek?”

She was silent for a second. “Yes,” she murmured.

He walked over and kissed her on the cheek, and saw a tremor run through her. “I’m really looking forward to our time together.”

She exhaled sharply. “Me too.”

He walked out of the cockpit, closing the door behind him, and sat back down across from Elizabeth.

“How’d it go?” she asked as he buckled back in.

“Pretty well,” he replied.

Can People Make Up Their Minds?

Probably not the best time for it, but this is just bugging me.

When I go looking at 1-2 star reviews of other books in my field, I try to find weaknesses that people don’t like seeing, to see if I can avoid those. One of the most common complaints I see of men’s adventure harem type stories, like I write, are that the female characters are weak, one-dimensional, cardboard-cutout types who aren’t characters so much as props.

I’ve always tried to make good, if not interesting, female characters. For a number of reasons, but also just because I want to have more interesting characters for the protagonist to interact with. To me, bland, one-dimensional female characters are kind of like super over-produced porn where the women look like CGI-perfected dolls. It’s too detached, too unnatural, too bland. I’ve always found that homemade, imperfect porn way better, because it feels real. It feels like actual people in a real life situation. It just feels more compelling.

But more than that, writing these characters feels realistic. A lot of people have trust issues. A lot of people have anger issues. Especially if they’ve been through traumatizing events. I get that I’m not going for perfect realism here, but I do feel like the line has to be drawn somewhere. And on top of that, characters can change. They can start out hostile and mistrusting, and gradually change that as they get to know the protagonist better. Not to mention, isn’t this the ‘drama’ that everyone raves about so much?

I’ve had people complain about Ellie in Haven, Elizabeth in Like A Fine Wine, and now Megan in A Warm Place. They’re ‘playing headgames’ and are ‘too difficult’. And it’s like, WTF? You think they should just immediately roll onto their backs and open their legs? Personally, I feel like the narrative would have suffered a lot if Megan had just immediately fucked Chris after everything that had happened to her. If anything, I feel like it happened too quickly, but you can’t keep people in suspense forever when they want sex scenes.

So….yeah, that’s it really. Will people fucking make up their minds?

Do you hate vapid, one-dimension female companions or do you hate female companions with a bit more depth and complexity that challenge the protagonist even just a little?

You can’t have it both ways.

Looking Ahead At 2021 (January/2021 Newsletter)

So………

Wow. 2020 sucked.

At the beginning of each year, I try to do a little reflection and then provide a forecast for what’s to come. I have been considering these two things for most of the past month, and for what felt like a long time, I wasn’t quite able to properly process much of anything.

Although I cannot claim that anything dramatic or terrible happened to me during 2020, it did seem to take a heavy toll. Especially towards the end. The broadest, simplest way I can put it is: my anxiety caused a lot of fucking problems.

At present, I’m currently pursuing a few new avenues to help alleviate that problem. And even though I couldn’t quite afford it, I ended up taking off a good solid week or so last month to try and settle down and get my head screwed back on right. From where I’m standing right now, I think it helped. I feel calmer, more focused, which is always a great thing.

So first, let’s reflect a little bit.

LOOKING BACK ON 2020

Near the end of 2019, I decided I was going to focus on Haven for 2020, and I succeeded there. It led to me having probably one of my best years, sales-wise. I finished out Haven in October and although I could have kept it going, I chose not to. There’s just too much else I want to do.

I also managed to start a new series for the first time in quite awhile in the form of Like A Fine Wine. I’m not completely sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, the people who do read it seem to like it. On the other, it isn’t selling well and there have also been some frustrations that it’s too plot and action-light. When I went into Like A Fine Wine, I did so with the idea that it was kind of an experiment for me. I wanted to see how I would fair nowadays with writing something closer to what I used to, something that was more fluff and sex than anything else. Personally, I think I’m better off writing more action/plot-heavy stuff. Nonetheless, I intend to finish Like A Fine Wine in short order.

I managed to get out another Demoness novel. Although I had fun writing it, I’ll admit that I’m kind of depressed at its reception. Though people really seemed to like Demoness in the beginning, not many people showed up this time.

Those were the major releases in terms of new novels. I also bumbled around a hell of a lot with bonus content and collections. This is what ultimately came of that bumbling:

  • I enrolled almost all of my collections in the Kindle Unlimited. People seem to like this.

  • I released Complete Series versions of Haven, Parasexual, and Alien Harem, as well as Demoness I - III Collected.

  • I reorganized all of my bonus shorts that were written for existing stories. Though some got added to the stories themselves, (for example, the bonus short for Parasexual 1 - 3 was an epilogue for Parasexual 2, so I just added it onto the actual story), or added them to the Complete Series/Trilogy Collections, but many of them were released for free on the website. This includes brand new sequels to each of my free shorts, (Snakeskin, The Pale Redhead, etc.). You can find a complete breakdown of what happened in this post.

I also created a comprehensive Chronological Order Reading List that encompasses all four of the shared universes and includes every single piece of content generated. In short, it tells you the best order to read everything in.

Finally, I got started on what will (hopefully) become my largest series to date: A Warm Place. But considering that that’s upcoming, I’ll speak more about it below.

So that was 2020 in a nutshell. It was a difficult year, and I don’t necessarily live with the delusion that 2021 will be nothing but sunshine and rainbows, but I’m hoping it’ll be better.

LOOKING FORWARD AT 2021

My primary focus for this upcoming year will be A WARM PLACE.

For those who don’t know, back in 2019 I launched an experimental pen name and wrote a 12-part serial fiction called A Warm Place. I liked it very much, and the people who read it responded quite well to it. Although I took down the pen name and all associated work with it near the end of 2019, I knew I had something special with A Warm Place. I began working on the series mid-2020 in the background and am finally ready to launch it.

So what is it?

In short, it’s a series of post-apocalyptic survival novels with an emphasis on sexual encounters and relationships. In 2038, the world is a frozen wasteland, and most of humanity has died off as a result. Those that remain live among small towns or isolated enclaves, but some choose to wander the desolate hinterlands between the bastions of civilization. Chris Weston, a man oddly suited for survival in this new world, is one such person.

You can read A WARM PLACE - PRELUDE, a 34,000 word novella prequel that helps set the stage for the series, here. However, it is not required reading. If you want to just jump right in, you can read A WARM PLACE right here.

At present, I intend A Warm Place to be nine novels long. I have a rough layout of the series and I intend to release one new novel at the beginning of each month. (We will see how this holds up, though. I’ve never attempted something like this.) I also intend to release triple pack collections with bonus content. At present, I’m not sure if I’ll release a Complete Series version of it. The primary reason for this is because I’m not sure if I’ll continue the series beyond the initial nine-novel run. I have a few ideas and if it’s wildly successful, I’ll admit I’d be compelled to keep it going. Not forever, but for a bit longer. Basically for as long as I have ideas.

So, with the spotlight being focused on A Warm Place, what else is going to happen?

First and foremost, I intend to finish Like A Fine Wine. I had hoped to get the fourth novel out before now, but that was one of the sacrifices I had to make for the sake of my mental health. I should have Like A Fine Wine 4 done and out soon, hopefully within the next week or two. Definitely before the end of January. After that, I intend to immediately plunge on into Like A Fine Wine 5, as at present I do have the cover art for it. I’m hoping that while I am working on 5, I’ll be able to get my hands on the final cover for 6. Even if I can’t do so in a reasonable amount of time, I might go ahead and just write and release it with reused assets anyway, then just update the cover later, since readers care more about the words than the cover art. If all goes according to plan, I will be able to post The Complete Series version of Like A Fine Wine in March. We’ll see how that works out.

After that?

I want to try an experiment. I’ve mentioned that I’ve waffled back and forth for awhile now on whether or not I want to launch a new serial fiction. It’s a surprisingly difficult decision. I think one of the biggest problems is that one week it will make perfect sense for me to do it, but then the next week, I’ll have a great reason not to do it. Seriously, I have alternated between for sure doing it and for sure not doing it several times over the past several months. Here is what I have ultimately decided: I’m going to do one and treat it like an experiment.

I’ll talk more about it as we get closer to launch, which will hopefully be in either March or April. But here’s what I will say about it: It takes place in my Fantasy Universe, though it’s basically completely set apart from anything else written so far, and it’s a town-building monster girl harem. Going heavy and hard on the monster girls this time, so sort of a return to form. In short, imagine the plot of Demoness IV but the setting of Demoness V. I’m looking forward to it. I hope to release a new episode once a week, with a Complete Season (very old school) being released every fifth episode.

Those three things will be my primary focus for 2021. That being said, if I do find myself with spare time, I am going to be focusing on something else, which is: generating content for my website.

Something that was really heavily emphasized for me in 2018 was: if your job requires you to sell something through a big retailer, never fully trust them and try to draw people to a space you control. Amazon tried to kill my career in 2018, so naturally I’d like to have a backup in place. That’s why I have a Patreon & a Ko-Fi. However, something I’ve wanted to do for awhile now is to set up a store on this site, so that my fans can have the option to buy directly from me. In much the same way I found myself in the ‘golden handcuffs’ back during 2018 where I was attempting to make the transition from writing serial fiction to writing novels, I now find myself in a similar situation. In order to keep my head above water, financially, I need to produce content at a rather breakneck pace. Which doesn’t leave much room for anything else. The only real solution, unfortunately, is: write more, write faster. Which I’m not as good at as I’d like to be, even six years in.

This year, I’d like to actually set up a store on my site. I’d be selling incest erotica through this store, primarily, since I can’t really sell it anywhere else. Occasionally, I might write something else, something that takes place in one of my universes, that I can sell both through the site and Amazon, and elsewhere on the internet, just not through the KU. I would also like to write and release (for free, obviously) erotic fan fiction. I’ve got a lot of ideas. But that’s definitely lowest on the list of priorities.

That’s it, really. That’s what I’ve got lined up for 2021. Let’s recap in a nice, neat, bulleted list.

  • Write (at least) nine novels for A Warm Place.

  • Finish Like A Fine Wine.

  • Launch (and maybe finish) an experimental Fantasy serial fiction.

  • Launch a store for my website, write some incest erotica and some erotic fan fiction.

I’ve got other plans and ideas, and who knows? Maybe 2021 will be the year I manage to get my shit together and keep it together, allowing me previously unexplored writing output. If that’s the case, I’ll probably write the next Post-Apocalyptic Universe series. Looking forward to that one.

Either way, lots of new material coming. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope 2021 is better for all of us.

A Warm Place Chapters 0 & 1 Preview!

Okay, here’s the preview of the first two chapters of my upcoming post-apocalyptic survival novel A Warm Place!

If you are a 1$/month (or above) Patron over on my Patreon, you can also read the next chapter right here!

A Warm Place will be out January 1st, 2021! Possibly even December 31st, depending on how fast Amazon gets it up.

ZERO

I can no longer remember the exact day that the snowfall began.

I know it was in June, two years ago now.

Some days I’m convinced that it was the fifteenth of the month, but other days I seem certain, absolutely certain, that it was twenty first. And then other days, I just don’t know. I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. A lot of people argue and debate over when the end of the world began, I suppose that’s why I still fixate on it from time to time.

There are those who say it began in this decade or that decade of the previous century. Some even say it began during the Industrial Revolution. They all probably have a good point. It wasn’t any one thing that led us here. It was a lot of little things, a few big things, and mainly just people, rich people, who either didn’t care or actively fought against saving the world.

I mean, I think. I could be wrong.

Shit, it could be aliens for all I know.

But for me the end of the world began when snow fell in June.

I was in Florida when it happened. That was where I had lived my entire life.

There were warning signs. You kept hearing about freakier and freakier weather all up through the 2030s. For me it was ‘out of season’ hurricanes, or ‘unusually strong’ hurricanes that just kept coming. Eventually they wiped Miami completely off the map. And then the news started talking one day about how California was burning again, only this time it didn’t stop.

I remember seeing the Hollywood sign consumed in flames.

I think that’s what finally made it real for a lot people.

Or maybe it was the tornadoes ripping through the Midwest, leveling whole cities.

Or maybe it was the rain. Before the snow, we had rain, and I remember coastal cities just being totally flooded.

They had to evacuate New York City. As far as I know, no one ever went back.

I swear to God, it was like a goddamn disaster movie. Only it didn’t stop.

It just got worse.

Even with all that, I still got floored when it started getting cold, as in cold cold, in the middle of June. I went outside one morning and saw my breath on the air. It felt like stepping into a parallel universe. A few days later, a blizzard hit my town. I think that was when it really clicked home for me that this wasn’t going to just go away. I don’t know why that was the straw the broke the camel’s back for me, but it was.

I still wonder how long the politicians knew. Obviously the scientists knew, but I do wonder how many of them kept silent...or were silenced.

That’s still a really clear memory for me, though.

Stepping out of my apartment building and just stopping as the cold hit me like a hammer. It had been seventy five degrees the day before.

My breath on the air.

My lungs burning in the cold.

Miserably gray clouds overhead.

That was when I knew, somewhere deep, that this was it.

This was the beginning of the end.

ONE

I opened my eyes and was met with confusion and pain.

For several seconds, I had no idea what was happening, what hadhappened, or even where I was. I tried to move. My body was well on its way to numb, my muscles sluggish and unresponsive. I groaned and shifted again.

I was constrained by something, it was across my chest.

I blinked a few times, looked around, shivering, and finally my brain clicked back on at least part of the way. I was inside my damned car. But something was wrong, deeply, frighteningly wrong. I groaned as a wave of pain rolled through my body. My seatbelt was what was holding me in place. I reached down and fumbled with it, trying desperately to figure out what in the fuck had happened. Because obviously something had happened.

That my jeep, I realized all at once, was tilting slightly to the right. And there was a crack through the windshield, a big one. I hit the release and pulled the seatbelt up. My thoughts came slowly, like they had to crawl to get to where they were going. I knew I had to do something. I just wasn’t sure what the fuck it was.

Jesus, how hard had I hit my head?

Judging by the headache that was being kept at bay by the cold, probably pretty hard.

The cold. That was it. The cold. I had to get out of the cold.

“Come on!” I snapped, and jerked my whole body. A bolt of pain seared through me and I felt several different parts of my body cry out in pain. It hurt like fuck, even through the numbing cold, but it served its purpose.

I was more awake and aware.

Okay, I’d been in a crash. I’d been driving along a highway perched up on a steep incline and...I must’ve gone down over the incline. Why? I was pretty careful with my driving. Especially given how fucking foggy it had been.

Then I remembered.

Someone had appeared out of the fog. I’d been going a little faster than I should have. I’d swerved, gone right through the guard rail and down the incline. Shit. After all I’d gone through to get this damned car, the luck of finding it, and I’d only managed to hold onto it for a freaking month and a week!

I looked around, shivering worse now.

Maybe it wasn’t a total loss. But that could wait. The driver’s side window was broken out, as was the back windshield. I could hear the wind shrieking and knew that meant a storm was on the way. As I looked back out through the cracked windshield, I saw from the big fat snowflakes that were tumbling down from the iron gray skies overhead it was already here. Fuck. If I didn’t find somewhere secure in a hurry I could freeze to death.

I tried the door. It wouldn’t open. Feeling a bit of panic, I shoved against it. It should open if it hadn’t been too damaged in the crash, given that my side was the one that was angled slightly up in the tilted car. I began shoving harder, leaning into it and pushing against whatever I could. The door groaned and suddenly popped open.

I fell out into a drift of snow.

“Fucking-fuck!” I snapped, anger and pain briefly overwhelming me as my whole body cried out in anguish. I struggled back to my feet and automatically reached back into the car, towards the passenger’s seat, where my backpack full of all my most crucial shit was. My heart skipped a beat as I failed to find it. I crawled back into the vehicle, pain momentarily forgotten as fear started to overwhelm me.

No, it had to have just fallen down in the-

I looked on the floor, below the glove compartment, which itself hung open.

It was empty.

“Oh fuck me,” I whispered.

Someone had robbed me. I looked in the back fruitlessly. They had even taken the fucking mattress I’d had back there!

There was nothing left.

I stepped out of the car, my head suddenly clearing, my panic suddenly zeroing out.

In the ensuing months of the apocalypse, I had learned that I was oddly suited for surviving in it. Perhaps even thriving in it. One of the reasons, and this was one I had nurtured once I had recognized it for what it was, was that when the shit went down and fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, it was almost like a circuit breaker was flipped in my head. My panic, my anger, my fear, after a certain threshold they just drained away in a hurry.

Leaving my head clear to act.

I stepped up on the seat I had just been sitting in, getting my head above the car and taking a look around the area. Behind me was the incline I’d crashed down and the highway above. Well, I called it a highway, really it was more of a route through desolate nowhere, not one of those big four-lane jobs everyone thought of when you said highway. Nothing back there for me. There wasn’t much to see to my left because the land rose a good six or seven feet. To the right was a relatively flat stretch of land and I could see some trees scattered about.

Dead ahead, though…

The visibility was shit and getting shittier. But through the blowing snow I saw it: a building. It was small, almost certainly a cabin of some kind, but it was, ideally, four walls and a roof. Even that could mean the difference between life and death. Hopping back down, I immediately set out. Marching around the front of my vehicle, I headed off, kicking my way through the snow, careful as I could be to keep from falling in any holes in the ground. That had happened way too often for my liking since this whole thing had begun.

I paused only once, glancing back at my jeep. It was a lonely sight, and a sad one. I’d found that thing six weeks ago and worked hard to fix it. And now it was probably fucked. Well, that was the way of the world now.

Or I guess it always had been, it was just more obvious now.

Telling myself to get over it, that whining about it, even inside my own head, wouldn’t change shit, I marched on.

The cabin grew closer as the winds picked up. Yes, definitely a blizzard. I fucking hated blizzards. Well, I guess that wasn’t entirely true. Some of the most sex-fueled nights I’d had were during bad blizzards.

I tried to think as I marched across the open space towards the cabin, but it was too hard to think. My head was hurting and that, combined with how fucking cold and in pain I was in other places, andthe damned blizzard, made it too hard to think about the before or the after. I guess all I should worry about was the right now.

There wouldn’t be an after if I didn’t get my ass in gear and stay alive.

As I got closer to the cabin, it became obvious that the front door was open. Great. That could mean nothing, and I didn’t notice smoke coming out of the chimney. But someone could’ve just gotten there ahead of me, seen me coming, or maybe heard my crash, (how long had I been out?), and was now laying in wait for me. Fuck, and I didn’t have any weapons on me, either. Or did I? I began checking my pockets patting them down. No, the holster on my hip wasn’t just empty, it was gone. Knife was gone, too.

And my-

A wash of fear broke through my stoic dam as something occurred to me and I reached into my inner pocket.

“No,” I muttered as I began digging deeper into the pocket, even as I knew it was empty. “No, no, no!” I snapped.

My journal!

My fucking journal!

For a moment I was almost overwhelmed by anger, pure, white-hot anger that I hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.

I was fucking livid.

But a particularly strong gust of wind almost knocked me over and a throb of pain cut through my body and it was like a dash of cold water across me. I could be angry later. Someone had stolen my journal, but I would deal with that later.

Of all the fucking things that could-

“No,” I muttered as I tromped on towards the cabin. “Fix it later.”

As I approached the open front door, cutting down to maybe twenty feet of space, I realized there was someone inside. They were laying on the floor, apparently passed out. I got a little closer and shifted, trying to get a read on what I was seeing. A woman. An attractive woman. Fuck. I looked around immediately.

This screamed trap.

But I didn’t see or really sense anyone out there. Didn’t mean no one was out there, but normally my instincts were good. Of course, I’d just been in a car wreck, a bad one that I was lucky to walk away from, and in a worsening storm.

And I was unarmed.

Not quite defenseless, but definitely unarmed. I moved forward until I hit the front wall of the cabin and peered cautiously inside. I saw some things: a bed, a kitchen area, a fireplace, but no people other than the unconscious woman. Time to do a perimeter check, see if someone was hiding out back or something.

I considered the possibilities as I walked around, scoping the situation out.

This seemed like a trap because I knew a lot of guys, not everyguy, but too many who were out and about nowadays, would find an unconscious woman and do exactly what you think they would do. I wouldn’t, because amazingly, there was more standing between me and doing unforgivable evil than ‘I’ll get away with it’.

The apocalypse didn’t wipe out everyone’s moral compass, in fact, I’d seen some genuinely self-sacrificing, heroic people since the snow started to fall.

But I think most people don’t realize that a shocking number of us don’t really have a moral compass, or maybe even just a shitty one.

And all these cliché tropes about civilization being the only thing keeping us from turning into barbaric savages was way more true than we’d like to admit.

In a way, it was true for me.

Before, I never would have killed someone.

Now? I had killed people. Not many, and I avoided it if at all possible, but sometimes it literally was you or them.

And it wasn’t going to be me.

I moved around the side, tried to peer in one window, but a curtain was pulled over it. So far, no sign of anyone. I kept going.

It was also possible that the woman had been running from someone, and that someone might still be around, looking for her. All the more reason to get inside and get secure. I came around back. Still no one. Just a thick forest about twenty feet away, barely visible now. Hustling along, I quickly completed my circuit and became about as certain as I could, given the circumstances, that I was alone save for the woman.

I carefully moved inside, ready to fight for my life if I had to, making damn sure to check either side of the open door before I got in.

No one was pressed up against the wall with a gun or a knife or something else to smash me in the head with.

Once inside, I closed the door and the howling of the winds quickly became blessedly muted. Working as fast as I could, I checked the building out. It was small, the kind of place people rented out, usually one, maybe a couple, to get away from everyone and everything for a weekend. So the kitchen, living room, bedroom, all one room. There were only two other doors. One led to a narrow closet that was basically empty with no place to hide, the other led to a bathroom with a shower stall that was going to be useless.

I checked the shower, I checked under the sink and under the bed, I checked everywhere a person could conceivably hide.

Finally, satisfied that I wasn’t going to get jumped, I moved over to the woman.

Crouching, I began to assess her.

She was still alive, that much was obvious, and I couldn’t see any blood or wounds. She wasn’t quite dressed for cold weather, wearing just some jeans, hiking boots, and a thin jacket over a shirt. She was very cold to the touch. Chances were, she passed out from exhaustion and being cold. Something I felt close to doing.

But I couldn’t, not yet.

Carefully, I picked her up and crossed the room. I got her situated on the only bed, a double-wide that was just big enough to hold two people. I got her under a blanket, made sure her head was comfortably on the pillow, then went back to the closet and pulled another blanket I’d seen in it down. Throwing it over her, I moved over to the fireplace.

For a moment, I was stymied. Normally I’d have supplies to start a fire, but I’d been motherfucking robbed and…

There. Relief flooded me as I saw a pack of matches peeking out from underneath a nearby footrest. I retrieved them, opened them up. Only six left, but hey, it worked. I pocketed them and then checked around the fireplace for stuff to burn. There was nothing left in the fireplace itself, and there were just a handful of twigs and a single, somewhat more substantial log left in an area that was clearly designated for fuel.

I threw it all in and then hunted around for a bit longer. There was a desk in the corner to the right of fireplace, beneath a window next to the front door. The top was bare, but as I rifled through the drawers, I found some papers. Good tinder. I set some in after ripping them up a bit and adjusted the fuel as best I could.

I’d need more, I didn’t think I was going anywhere for the rest of the day, but this would do for now. Working carefully and diligently, I got to work.

Firs things first: I checked that the chimney was clear. It was.

God fucking forbid I die of carbon monoxide inhalation after all the shit I’d survived.

It took a few minutes and two of the damned matches, but I got a fire going. It was small but growing. I crouched there, tending to it, making little adjustments and just relishing the warmth. Well, sort of.

Warmth meant my body was going to lose the numbness that was acting close enough to a painkiller. All that pain I was in was going to hit me full force. Making myself leave the primal comfort of the fire, I moved back over to the woman and checked on her. She was breathing less shallowly now and her color was coming back.

I wondered who she was. She looked young, maybe late teens or early twenties. Not too much younger than I was, even if I no longer felt twenty five.

I didn’t know what age I felt, other than old, most days.

She was obviously attractive, a redhead who would have easily been a cam model or vlogger or whatever a few years ago, with a lot of subscribers desperate for her attention. Even bedraggled and half-dead her beauty was obvious. I left her in the bed and walked back over to the door. Might as well scavenge for wood while the storm had yet to go into full swing. I opened the door, glanced back one more time at the mystery woman, then I left.

Back into the hungering cold.