Early Access On Patreon

So I’ve decided to go ahead and give this a shot.

In short, for 3$/month, you will now get access to my stories as I write them. I’ll post them, chapter-by-chapter. There won’t be anything special, basically it’ll just be an extended version of what I already do with the early access to the first two chapters.

Speaking of which, if you’re a 1$/month Patron, you can read the first two chapters of A Warm Place 9 here. Or the first chapter here for free.

And you can read the third chapter here, the first to be posted under the new 3$/month reward tier. (You will get access to this automatically if you are a 5$/month Patron.)

I’m not going to have a set release schedule for this, and honestly that’s my biggest hesitation behind doing this. Before now, I’ve tried to be decently honest about what’s happening behind the scenes, but the only one who knows about it when I lose it and just need however many days off, or I get distracted for however long, is me. The only things readers know is there’s this big, nebulous span of time and then suddenly there’s a book. You won’t have a perfect view of my writing schedule, but you’ll certainly have a clearer picture, and suddenly it’s going to be WAY more embarrassing and guilt-wracking when I suddenly lose it and fall off halfway through the week and don’t get back on the horse until the following week. (This happens a lot, thanks to depression, anxiety, and other unspecified phantom physical health problems, combined with just real life stuff, and writer problems like when I’m stuck on one scene and I just don’t fucking feel like writing this kind of scene right now and I keep trying to do it but just can’t again and again until suddenly I can and I’m over it, but then I know the same exact problem is lurking somewhere in the shadows…)

My long, rambling point is I’m a mess and doing this will inadvertently shine a brighter light on just how much of a mess. But it will also (ideally) strengthen the bridge between myself and you the readers.

So basically, I’ll upload as I can.

If you’re interested in this, here’s my Patreon.

Also, one more note, I will start putting up Our Own Way 7 soon, but the chapters are going to be unedited. Our Own Way should be the only time this happens, because with that series, I’ve ended up taking a different route. Because they are shorter, I just write the whole thing, and then go through and edit afterwards, versus my normal style of editing as I write.

If you do decide to support me this way, then I really appreciate it. Thank you.

A Warm Place 9 Preview

Here’s the first chapter of A Warm Place 9.

You can read Chapter Two if you are a 1$/month patron here.

You can read Chapter Three, and onward, if you are a 3$/month Patron, here. (Here’s a blog explaining this latest development.)


Awake again.

Panic again.

I sat up, as the panic was more mild this time, and already I was questioning it, and looked around. Everything was moving, gently. It was subtle, but it was obvious, like I was in a car driving along a highway. Only that didn’t happen anymore, for the most part. It was dark, though not completely so.

A single shaft of light spilled into the room and gave me a view of it, and I relaxed as it came back to me again and slowly laid back down.

After two and a half years of snowy apocalypse where almost nothing actually worked anymore, it was still incredibly jarring to wake up on a moving train. For me, at least. And Hannah and Susan. As far as I knew, the others didn’t have a problem adjusting to it. We got nightmares somehow related to being tied up or buried alive for some reason, but as I laid there in the dim light, I realized that I couldn’t remembering having one last night.

Maybe I was getting used to it.

For a moment, I just laid there and stared at the ceiling. The light in our cabin came from a single bullet hole in the exterior wall. We’d debated for a bit about what to do about it and ultimately I liked the idea of having even a tiny extra window to provide sunlight in the morning. The problem with our pair of windows was that there was no in between. The metal shutters were either sealed tight, hiding the light completely, or fully open. Considering we were all supposed to be sleeping in, me especially, we didn’t particularly want sunlight blazing into the cabin every morning. We didn’t quite want perfect darkness either.

The bullet hole seemed like a nice little compromise. Normally I’d light candles, to help me see during the night, or have a fire going in a fireplace. But candles in a moving train made me nervous that they might get knocked off while we were sleeping and catch something on fire, and the train was built well enough that having a fire going in the wood-burning stove that had been added to the cabin before we’d gotten there made it unbearably hot. So, we’d found some thick plastic, cut a piece to fit the hole, and shoved it in.

It worked well enough.

Like having the blinds or curtains open just a crack.

I wondered idly what time it was. The quality of the light put it definitely past dawn. It might be towards noon even.

I wasn’t prone to sleeping in, but Lisa and Melanie both had told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to spend as much time sleeping and resting as possible while the train was running as it was supposed to and we had the time.

For once, I didn’t argue.

The main reason was that the last several weeks had really kicked my ass in a way it had never been kicked before. Starting with the trek back to Pine Lake, the run-in with the asshole group, then the furious race to find Megan and Melanie and Fay, to the desperate rush that lasted for weeks trying to keep Pine Lake alive, and finally getting this train operational…

When we’d taken off, heading north towards, hopefully, our salvation, I was more tired than I ever remembered being in my entire life.

I’d probably slept half of the past five days away.

My body was beaten, bruised, and battered, and my exhaustion was bone-deep.

It felt worse than when I’d been recovering after getting shot.

Even now, I could feel that I wasn’t healed up completely. I knew I owed part of that to the fact that after two days, I hadn’t been able to really stay down when I probably should have. There was a lot to do on the train and I felt too much like shit just laying there while everyone else was getting it done. I’d argued with Lisa about it and she’d finally given me some light duty. Mostly I hung out in the kitchen with Elizabeth and Delilah and a few others preparing meals or sorting food, making sure we had enough.

One of the girls murmured in her sleep and shifted. I looked over. It was Hannah. She lay between Megan and I. Across from the foot of the bed was another, smaller bed, a twin size where Lara and Susan slept together. We’d agreed that five of us should share the room given that it was pretty large.

I had to admit, it was sure nice enough for me.

That was another reason I probably wasn’t healing up as fast as I could be: four horny and willing women who were usually naked in here with me.

How could I possibly turn them down when they offered?

Megan and Susan seemed to be the more responsible of the four, tending to hold off or not go for longer sessions, but Lara and Hannah?

Lara was hypersexual, it seemed, and Hannah was still in the midst of discovering just how fucking awesome sex could be.

And then of course there was Jessica, and Elizabeth. Two horny MILFs who lived right next door who had both gotten out of shitty, sexless marriages not all that long ago and had figured out that sex with me was really, really nice.

And there was also Lisa, Fay, and Melanie, who I was having casual side sex with, although Fay and Lisa had been too busy since we’d begun living on the train and Melanie had only fucked me once. I got the impression she was holding back for just the reason that she was a doctor and knew I needed to rest and recover.

With a sigh, I sat up and got to my feet, then moved into the tiny bathroom and took a piss. I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep at this point, I could just tell. Probably a good idea to get up anyway.

I flushed the toilet and was again struck by how much I missed that sound. Goddamn was it good to have a working toilet. I glanced at the shower stall. And shower. We had to ration, because there was only so much hot and clean water, but still, a five minute hot shower every two days and a functional toilet was just amazing.

I brushed my teeth and was considering who to wake up to take my shower with, because it made sense to double-up while showering and I hadn’t taken one yesterday, which meant I got to take one today, when I heard someone moving in the bedroom behind me. A moment later there was a light knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said.

The door slid open and Susan appeared, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Hey...I gotta pee,” she murmured.

“Want to shower with me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied immediately.

“Brush your teeth and pee, then we can shower,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied.

I finished up and then stepped out. She went in and shut the door and got to her business. Lara was still out, I could see, and so was Megan, but I thought Hannah would be up soon. I was surprised Susan was the one who’d gotten up first, normally she was a heavy sleeper. Although honestly, I was more surprised that Hannah wasn’t already awake. But I guess the past few weeks had taken a heavy toll on her as well.

I heard the toilet flush and the shower start up and slipped back into the bathroom.

~

Twenty minutes later I emerged from our quarters with Hannah and Susan, dressed and feeling refreshed.

The bad thing about doubling up on showers was that it tended to take longer...for obvious reasons.

The good thing about doubling up was that technically speaking, we each had five minutes, which meant that what was supposed to be a five minute shower had turned into fifteen minutes of sex in the shower with Susan and then Hannah.

So that was pretty cool.

We walked down the hallway to the dining area of our cart, which was almost empty. Only a few people were sitting at the tables, and I could see why: judging by the position of the sun out the windows, it was maybe an hour before noon. These few people were either taking late breakfasts like us, or an early lunch. We got our food from the serving area, finding vegetable stew and venison on offer, and orange juice. That one was nice, there had been a huge stash of long frozen OJ on the train and we were making good use of it since there was a decent chance we wouldn’t realistically be able to bring most of it with us when the train broke down.

So far, this vehicle we’d found had held up pretty well.

I’d hardly seen Fay because she’d been so busy running maintenance all over it, but she seemed happy. Busy, but happy.

The few times I’d spoken with her she seemed confident that it’d keep going for at least several more days before something went wrong. That was something she had stressed: it was going to break down, and it almost certainly was not going to make it to where we wanted it to. And I thought she was right.

So far, the going was slow.

Besides the fact that we were literally going slowly, both to keep the train from being too stressed and also to make it possible to stop in case there was something blocking the way or like a bridge or something was out, we also tended to stop at least once a day, sometimes twice. For a number of reasons: to gather energy from the solar cells more effectively (they didn’t work as well while in motion), to gather snow to melt for the water supply, to go on a hunting expedition.

So far I had yet to leave the train during one of these stops, except twice to stretch my legs and walk around outside for a bit.

By now, I was feeling the effects.

“What are you thinking about, babe?” Hannah asked, and I felt her foot brush mine under the table. I had been staring out the window at the frozen landscape of fields and trees and abandoned vehicles and buildings. I glanced over at her. She was smiling at me, a calm, warm smile, and I couldn’t help but return it.

Hannah had become extremely affectionate since we’d settled onto the train. It wasn’t that she wasn’t this way before, it was just that it was very obvious now. I wasn’t sure what was causing it but I liked it.

“I was thinking that whenever we next stop, I’m getting off this train and going on a hunting trip or something. Maybe explore a building,” I replied.

“You sure Melanie or Lisa will let you?” Susan murmured with a small smirk.

“I think they won’t be able to stop me. I’m still healing, but I’m no longer down for the count. I’m starting to get some cabin fever...what are you smirking at?”

“I just think it’s a little, uh...amusing, the way Lisa and Melanie...make you do things, I guess,” she replied.

“They’re very convincing,” I replied.

“Who’s the most convincing?” Hannah asked, brushing my foot with hers again.

“Oh no, I’m not heading into that territory. That’s just a variation on ‘who’s the prettiest?’ or ‘who fucks best?’. I don’t answer those questions.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Hannah murmured.

“That’s a smart man,” a new voice said. We glanced over as Lisa walked up to our table. “Mind if I join you?”

“You’re always welcome to join,” I replied.

She smiled and took a seat. “You seem to be doing better.”

“I am,” I replied, wondering how much she’d heard of what I’d said earlier about leaving the train. I knew she wouldn’t like it. She’d been worrying over me a lot. “How are things going on the train lately?”

“Well enough, I suppose, given what we’re dealing with,” Lisa replied, growing a little more irritable. She sighed. “I know I should be more grateful, and I am, it’s just that...I’m so fucking sick of bad things happening and shit going wrong.”

“You’re handling it really well,” Hannah said.

“Yeah. I mean, as our leader, you have to see the whole pictures, and make all the big decisions. All the rest of us get to focus on one or two little parts of the picture. Most of us couldn’t do that,” Susan added.

“Well, at this point, I can’t claim to run this whole miserable operation on my own,” Lisa replied. “Chris pretty obviously is helping shoulder a lot of this responsibility.”

“Oh no,” I said, “I just get shit done. I’m not a leader.”

“Come on, Chris, you can’t even pretend to claim that anymore,” Lisa said, folding her arms as she sat back in her chair and fixed me with a stern look. “You’ve played a significant role in making several big decisions.”

I stared back at her, a feeling of discomfort settling over me. I wasn’t sure what to say, how to respond to that.

“To be clear, you’re doing well,” she added, her features softening.

“I don’t like that idea,” I said finally.

“Which is a good sign,” Lisa replied.

“I don’t see how. A reluctant person in a leadership position doesn’t exactly instill confidence.”

“Surely you’re aware by now that the best people to make decisions are the ones who don’t want power. People who want power get corrupted pretty easily, or already are. You know who I mean: the jerk-offs who get off on power plays and telling people what to do. The pieces of shit who are content to hide in a bunker while sending thousands to fight and die, instead of being out there and laying their own lives on the line. Reluctant leaders who still understand responsibility and are brave enough to make the hard choices are the best, because they won’t abuse their power. Mostly. I fucking hate my job but I’m decent at it and we’d probably all be dead if I hadn’t stepped up,” Lisa said.

I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I guess you have a point. I still prefer to just be a useful tool. Aim me at a problem and let me fix it.”

“That’s a dangerous mindset,” Hannah said. “If some piece of shit who jacks off to power gets ahold of a ‘tool’ like that…”

“I mean I have to trust who’s aiming me at shit,” I replied.

“That’s a fair point,” she said.

Lisa began to say something but fell silent and began looking around as the train abruptly started to slow.

“What’s happening?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know,” Lisa replied, getting to her feet. “We shouldn’t be stopping.”

“Great,” I muttered, standing as well, abandoning what was left of my breakfast, “let’s go see what happened this time.”

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (March 2022)

This is going to be a short one.

In case you missed it, I managed to get a few things out last month.

I had hoped to make more progress with the other projects at this point, but I’m still dealing with certain things. As it stands, A Warm Place 9 is 1/3 finished, and I do have the cover. Our Own Way 7 is about 1/2 finished, and I also have the cover for that. In fact, I have all the covers for Our Own Way.

February was a LOT better than January, by several order of magnitudes. Looking back on it, I’m actually kind of shocked how bad January and some of December was. I’m still taking things kind of slow right now, which is why more progress wasn’t made on the other two projects. Real life things are still cropping up, also it’s winter, and I’m still figuring out my vitamin deficiency. I’m doing better, but mainly I’m taking more breaks and sanity check days so that I don’t start back sliding because honestly, that was fucking scary.

A Warm Place 9 and Our Own Way 7 should be out this month for sure. I might possibly get Our Own Way 8 out as well. Raw III is still on track for April. I’m hoping to make it bigger and better than the previous two books, both literally in terms of word count, but also in terms of things happening. I’m looking forward to it, because once I finish the other two series, it’ll be nothing but RAW for awhile.

The only other things on my radar for now are:

  • My friend released two novels. One has monster girls, the other is post-apocalyptic. Both harem. (I didn’t have basically anything to do with these, for reference.) Desperate Times 4 is gonna come at some point, and we’re updating the covers for the Desperate Times series as well.

  • I am tossing around the idea of beginning an early access program on my Patreon. In short, for 3$/month, you can read my works as they are being written, chapter by chapter. The biggest caveat is that they would be taken down shortly after completion, to satisfy Amazon’s exclusivity clause.

That’s about it.

Raw II Preview

The preview is finally here! Which means the actual novel release isn’t that far behind…ideally.

As usual, the first chapter is free, the second one you get access to if you are a 1$/month or higher patron over on my Patreon.

Check it out here.


CHAPTER I

“There will be many, many corpses,” Jak said as he ducked under a branch, then stepped over a large rock. “And we must deal with them today.”

“I’m not looking forward to it,” Rylee replied.

“I suppose it is worth it, if it means we have a new home, and safety,” Niri murmured.

“Safety for now,” Jak said. “You have to remember that we will never truly be safe. Especially not while we have so small a tribe.”

“Do you really think we can find others to join us? We are a strange group: an elf, a magic user, and a man from a mysterious, distant land,” Niri said.

“I think I can convince people to join us,” Jak replied. “They already have a name for me.”

“Who?” Rylee asked.

“The Tolvar. They called me the Amber Warrior.”

“Hmm. I suppose the color of your skin is a little like amber,” Rylee said. “And you are definitely quite the warrior.”

They fell silent as they approached the clearing in front of the cave. Already, Jak could detect the various scents of the recent slaughter. Blood, guts, excrement. Fear. He could smell it lingering on the air, even now. As he caught this awful concoction of odors, Jak felt his body responding instinctively. His senses opening up, preparing to warn him of danger. Usually, if there were dead things around, the thing that killed it might also still be around. Even though in this case he was the thing that had killed, or helped kill, everyone here.

But other things could have shown up since he’d gone to get the women.

Slowly, they emerged into the clearing in front of the cave that was to be their new home. For a moment, they simply stood there together, surveying the carnage.

“This is truly impressive,” Rylee murmured finally. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of something like this. A single man wiping out an entire warparty.”

“It wasn’t a single man,” Jak replied. “It was mostly spiders.”

“But you thought to lead them here. To pit them against each other. And it worked,” Rylee pressed. “This is entirely your doing.”

“You two helped.”

“It was mostly you,” Niri said.

“Well, it’s done,” Jak replied, unsure of how to feel about this. He did feel proud about the bloody battlefield, but it also made him uncomfortable for a reason he could not articulate. “For now, we should explore the caves, and be wary. Other predators or scavengers may come up, and I imagine there must be more Tolvar out in the forest, those who weren’t here when the battle happened.”

“Oh...yes. That is true,” Niri murmured, looking around uncomfortably.

“Come on. The sooner we begin this work, the sooner we can claim these caves as our new home, the site of our new tribe,” Jak said, and began making his way across the field of death. Though the large bonfire had mostly gone out by now, a few fires still burned from where something large had crashed into it and scattered burning wood everywhere. Jak was grateful it hadn’t spread to the forest. He studied the area with a focused eye.

The clearing sat in front of a large rock wall that curved up into a broad overhang which shaded almost half of the space. In the rock wall were three cave entrances. The one in the middle was the largest, while the one to the left was the smallest, closer in size to the cave Jak, Niri, and Rylee presently called home.

Perhaps the greatest feature was the waterfall. It was small, about the same size as the one they had been making morning pilgrimages to, off to the east side of the cave complex, just out of sight enough to provide a little bit of privacy, creating a creek that was just big enough to possibly sustain some fish and other creatures.

He tightened his grip on his club as he spied a few blood trails leading into the caves. It was entirely possible that some of the Tolvar had survived the battle and, while he had been gone, come back and hid in the caves to heal. Or that wolves or other predators had come and dragged some corpses into the caves for a quick meal.

Either scenario meant combat.

“Stay behind me,” Jak said as he crouched and picked up one of the more intact burning sticks. He passed it to Rylee. “Use this to light the way.”

“I will,” she replied, accepting it.

“Niri, make sure no one sneaks up behind us,” Jak said.

“All right.”

Jak chose the cave to the right to enter first. He still had a memory of it stored in his mind from his previous run-through before going to get the women. This time, though, he would move more slowly. He walked into the tunnel, studying everything he could see in the daylight and the flickering torchlight. The floor and the earthen walls to either side of him showed signs of life. There were many footprints in the dirt, marks along the walls from hands and weapons, made in passing. It seemed a few Tolvar shared Niri’s proclivity for painting on the cave walls, though their paintings seemed much more crude by comparison.

Broken pottery, bones, bits of flint and slate, vegetation, chunks of meat, burned wood, and discarded tools and weapons lay scattered randomly across the floor of the cave. There was a break in the right wall that led into a small cavern. One of the blood trails led there. Jak gripped his club more tightly, preparing for combat yet again.

He got up to the turn in the tunnel and peered slowly around it, revealing as little of himself as possible. The light was about as good, as a few small holes in the ceiling of the cavern ahead let some sun filter in. There was an unmoving shape near the center of the cavern. Jak waited several moments, then began making his way into the space. He quickly checked to his right and left, but no lingering Tolvar waited for him, no animals hid in the shadows to ambush him. The place was obviously lived in, not long ago likely a communal sleeping place. Several simple furs and bunches of some of the softer plants lay in heaps along the edge of the space.

Jak could see that the lump in the center of the cavern was indeed a body, and not breathing. He prodded it with his club when he got close enough. It didn’t react. He pushed it over onto its back and found a Tolvar warrior, quite dead. The reason was obvious enough: two deep bite marks on his shoulder and a gash across his stomach. He’d been hit during combat and a giant spider had bit him. He’d rushed in here in a panic and died. Maybe he’d had some antivenom stashed somewhere. If that was the case, he clearly hadn’t reached it in time.

Once he determined the sleeping area hid no threats, Jak returned to the main tunnel and followed it to its end. It ended in a split, one tunnel going right and leading to another cavern, this one a bit bigger. One went left and connected to the central tunnel. Jak went right and checked out the second cavern. It was much like the first, though it had the beginnings of somewhat more permanent residence. He saw larger clay pots and several baskets, as well as some basic furniture. There were a few shelves, sticks fitted and bound together with leather strips or vines, as well as a lot more beds. All of it was very crude, though.

Jak wasn’t sure how much of it they could use, but that was to be determined later.

There was so much to do.

He finished his inspection of this cavern and then moved into the central tunnel. It was fairly broad, almost a cavern unto itself, and it was obvious that several of the men had been living here. There were a few fireplaces surrounded by picked-clean bones, and ashes. A dead giant spider and a pair of Tolvar corpses lay near the other end of the tunnel, at the main entrance. He kept moving, checking out a little niche at the back of the primary tunnel, seeing that it seemed to have been serving as a place to store extra weapons and materials.

They walked together along the length of the central tunnel until they were back outside again, coming back out into the daylight, and then moved to the final passageway. It seemed mostly clear. They moved down it silently, following it to its end, where it turned sharply to the left. Something about it reminded Jak of the cave they had been living in. It opened into a third cavern, this one not too big, not too small. It had a single opening at the top and a shaft of sunlight spilled in like a waterfall of light, catching motes of dust in the air. The place seemed oddly untouched, just a bed and some weapons and the remnants of a fire and some meals scattered about. Maybe the Tolvar commander had been using it for himself.

“This will be our home,” Jak said as he looked around.

“You, me, and Rylee?” Niri asked hopefully.

“Yes. You, me, and Rylee. We will make our home in this cave.”

They stood there, looking around the cave. It was a little smaller than the one they had previously been living in, but that wouldn’t matter. Before, they had used that cave for everything, but here, they could store extra food, weapons, firewood, building materials, skins, and whatever else they might need in other parts of the cave network. This would be their personal space, their home. There was space for a large bed to accommodate all three of them, for Niri to paint on the walls, a hole in the ceiling to let out smoke from a fire, space for shelves and whatever else they might think to construct as they were making the place their own.

“I like it,” Rylee said finally.

“I do too!” Niri declared. She seemed to beam with happy energy as she walked around the cave. “It is wonderful! I love it already!” She ran over to Jak suddenly and leaped at him, wrapping her arms around him.

He laughed and caught and supported her easily. They shared a kiss.

“Thank you,” she murmured, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you so much. You’ve done so many nice things for me.”

“I love you too, Niri,” Jak replied, giving her a gentle squeeze. “You’ve done many nice things for me as well.” Supporting her with one hand, he turned and extended his arm to Rylee, who stepped up and hugged the two of them.

“I’m glad we are together,” she said.

“So am I,” Niri agreed, kissing Rylee on the mouth. “We should celebrate tonight!”

“If we have the energy,” Jak replied, letting her down. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

Niri lost some of her good cheer. She sighed softly. “Yes, that is true. And I…” she looked down at herself, “do not quite have the body for hard work.”

“Well...it depends on the work,” Jak replied, reaching up and briefly cupping one of her breasts.

She giggled and blushed. “I suppose that is true.”

“Come on, let us get to work.”

With that, he turned and walked back out of the cave, already imagining what the place was going to look like once he had set his hand to it.

The day was indeed very long.

Jak could tell that the corpses bothered both women, Niri especially, so he took to the duty of handling those. Rylee and Niri seemed happy enough to spend their time gathering up every weapon, every piece of clothing, every tool, every waterskin, every bit of food that was still eatable, everything that the Tolvar had gathered that might be useful. Already, he was thinking ahead. As Jak stripped each corpse and then hauled it off into another clearing a little ways away that he’d scouted out, he was already considering what might need to happen if they actually pulled off making a tribe. It still seemed somewhat unlikely.

Almost everyone he’d met so far had been extremely hostile. Save for Niri, Rylee, and Nessa, and he supposed technically that crow, which seemed to have flown off for the moment, everyone had tried to kill him. Or almost certainly would have tried to kill him, had he not avoided revealing his presence to them for one reason or another. Rylee had said there were others like her out there, and Nessa had hinted at something similar, but after the slaughter he had just instigated, Jak was having a hard time believing it.

The sun moved across the sky and hours disappeared as he stripped and hauled body after body through the woods.

He took a break once to eat, consuming a pouch of berries and nuts that Niri and Rylee had found among the storage area, then drained a waterskin and got back to work. He got the human bodies out of the way first, given he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the giant spider bodies. They were heavier and more dangerous to work with. He still had the antivenom in him, but he imagined it would be a real pain if he accidentally got himself caught on a fang. He kept at it, though, dragging them by their heavy limbs through the woods.

By the time Jak had finished getting all the bodies to the clearing, he was beginning to tire and the sun was starting to set.

Still, no Tolvar had showed up at the cave at least.

The clearing in front of the cave was bloody but otherwise had been cleaned up. He tracked down Niri and Rylee in the rearmost cavern along right side of the caves and found that they had gathered and placed all of the spare supplies and weapons and food from outside in there. There was a lot to sort through.

“We grabbed everything we could find,” Niri said.

“You both did great,” Jak replied.

“A lot of it seemed of low quality,” Rylee said. She was inspecting a spear at the moment. “My people unfortunately rely on quantity over quality. And it seemed especially true for this group. Most of these weapons might do in the immediate sense, but they’ll wear out quickly. Honestly most of them will be more useful for burning.”

“Then we shall burn them, and salvage what we can,” Jak replied. “For now, let us return to our cave. Tomorrow we can finish preparing this place for ourselves and move our supplies here. And claim it properly.”

Niri yawned. “I would much like to see our bed.”

“Me too. I don’t know how you managed to move all those bodies by yourself,” Rylee agreed, seeming to hold back a yawn.

“I suppose I just have a lot of strength,” Jak replied.

“Mmm...yes you do,” Niri murmured, running one hand up and down his arm, then slipping it down lower, resting it over his crotch. “Much strength…”

“Let’s get back to the cave,” Jak said, slipping a hand briefly under her wrap and groping her bare breast, making her let out a little noise of happy surprise.

They headed back out into the clearing. Jak was reluctant to leave the new caves after spending all day cleaning it out, but he knew the time was not yet right.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow they would really make it theirs.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (February 2022)

January was a nightmare.

After my unhappy update I was doing sort of okay and then I went to like…a REALLY dark place and I have to say, if I had to live in that place all the time, or shit even like half the time, death really might not be that bad of an option.

It was pretty fucking awful.

But it passed, and it was sort of like riding out the absolute worst, last part of a storm before the storm passes and things calm down. After getting Lust & Adventure - Epilogue out, I took a bit of a break. During the break, I examined WTF was wrong with me.

My primary problem was burnout. I was just way, way, WAY too burned out. And it was causing another problem: I was essentially ‘soft-locked’ in my writing. I’ll try to explain what the hell that means.

In short, I really needed to get Raw II written and out, because Raw got so popular. But any time I went to work on Raw II, I felt guilty, because I had already promised to get A Warm Place 9 out, so I’d decide to go work on AWP9 for a bit to alleviate that. But then I would feel guilty because working on Raw II makes way more sense, and at the same time, I’ve taken WAY too long to produce the next Our Own Way. So I’d go to work on that, but then feel stupid and guilty because it’s like ‘What are you doing? Our Own Way makes like 1/10 of Raw or AWP why are you working on it right now?! Strike while the iron is hot dumbfuck.’ And so I’d go back to Raw II, but then feel guilty about not working on A Warm Place 9………

So can you see what I mean by soft-locked? I couldn’t make meaningful progress on fucking anything because everything made me guilty that I wasn’t working on everything else.

And all through December, and part of January, I basically kept trying to start back up writing at my usual pace with not only that going on, but also the burnout. Basically, I was trying to run on a broken leg.

So I just tried to relax for a bit. Which was not easy. I don’t really know how to turn off. I just sit around my house thinking ‘I should be writing I’m so fucking lazy’.

But I finally managed to break through, and started writing again regularly. Unfortunately, a large part of that is due to the fact that I severely reduced my wordcount for now.

I imagine the big question is: where are you at with the projects?

Well, here’s the facts.

  • Raw II is about 2/3 finished and I’m hoping to have it published within the next 1-2 weeks. Obviously I’m gunning for sooner, so possibly within the next week. We shall see. I don’t want to try and start ‘running’ again and then fall and rebreak my leg.

  • Our Own Way 6 is getting close. It should be out within the next week.

  • I’ve made very little progress on A Warm Place 9. I tried and I did get some done, but it’s perhaps 1/10 written as of right now. Another part of my sanity check was admitting to myself that SOMETHING had to give, and that something was A Warm Place 9.

So, here is the plan going forward.

  • Publish Our Own Way 6 ASAP.

  • Then publish Raw II ASAP after that.

  • I will then shift my primary focus to writing and publishing A Warm Place 9, thus completing the A Warm Place series, as quickly as I can. If we are very, very lucky, I might get this out before the end of February, but it will almost certainly be hitting early March.

  • While working on A Warm Place 9, I will also be making progress on Our Own Way 7.

  • After A Warm Place 9 and Our Own Way 7 are written and out, I will begin work on Raw III and Our Own Way 8.

  • Once Our Own Way 8 is out, that will mean that the series is complete, and I will release a complete collection, thus clearing my table of everything but Raw.

  • I will then just be working on Raw titles for a little while. I need some time where I just focus on one thing. I’m sure that will drive me slowly insane like when I was just focusing on A Warm Place but I guess that’s my life: oscillating back and forth between working on one project, getting bored and burned out, then working on too many projects and getting overwhelmed and burned out.

  • As for what I’ll be working on after all this mess? Almost certainly my idea that’s basically A Warm Place but in a sci-fi setting and more extreme. I still want to write about winter survival and a bleak sci-fi setting will give me more opportunities for crazier shit happening, I think. I’ve got a solid idea of the setting and the characters, and a very rough sketch of the overall plot so far.

Also, another thing. I redesigned my website, and am going to redesign my backmatter. Basically, it occurred to me that I really need to fully commit to the harem author thing. Part of that is choosing what to ‘push’, as it were, to people who come seeking me out. Consequently, I have adjusted the landing page to something more minimalistic and to the point, and (hopefully) a bit more visually appealing, and I’ve condensed my shared universes quite a bit. So if you noticed things looking different, that’s why.

Finally, one more thing. Here’s a quick list of the six shorts that I finally have gotten out. All 99 cents, all in the KU.

That’s all I got. Hopefully February is a month of stability.

Unhappy Update

Continuing the trend that haunted me all through the end of 2021, I’m having a very unhappy 2022 so far.

This isn’t anything serious, it’s more me giving my readers a more realistic timeline and then an explanation for that timeline.

When I began heading into 2022, I expected to be able to get a lot done quickly, but that has simply not been the case.

Do you remember that scene in Armageddon, where they’ve been drilling on the asteroid for a few hours, and the NASA guy keeps asking how far they’ve made it. Finally he’s like “We’re supposed to be at 250 feet, what is our current depth?” And Bruce Willis finally admits “We’re at 82 feet.” And you see the pure cold fear come onto his face?

That’s how I end, like, every day now.

I’m supposed to have written like 9,000 words every weekday, making regular, consistent progress across Raw II, A Warm Place 9, and Our Own Way 6, and basically I have failed to do that literally every single day this year.

I’ve been kind of losing my shit and breaking down roughly every 2-3 days as a result of this and I just…cannot keep doing this.

I noticed that finally wrapping up the short trilogies did seem to help things a bit, and so it sort of tipped me off to the fact that I’m simply overworked. I have too many things that need to be released and quickly and it’s killing my ability to work on ANYTHING, thus ensuring basically nothing is getting done.

Consequently, I’ve taken the past few days off, and have finally settled on a plan. I’m going to make consistent progress on Raw II as much as I can, and I will also be focusing on clearing my plate of other projects. I would really like to get to a point where Raw is the ONLY thing I’m focusing on, which is actually within reach. A Warm Place 9 is the last novel in the series, and Our Own Way has 3 novellas to go, and beyond that there’s just the Lust & Adventure - Epilogue novella to write.

I’m going to try and get a sanity check, and mostly just go dark for a little while. Lust & Adventure - Epilogue probably won’t take all that long to write and get out, and then after that I think I’ll try and knock out the next Our Own Way, and then probably I’ll focus on A Warm Place 9 so I can close that series out. All the while I’ll be working on Raw II.

I really wish I could get back to my days where I could regularly knock out like 5-8,000 words, and I’m hoping that clearing the plate, waiting out winter, and getting a healthy amount of Vitamin D will help get me sane again, but for now, I simply have to admit to myself that I can’t do it all, and instead get on light duty for awhile.

I’m really sorry about this, and honestly, it’s particularly gutting for me personally when I know for a fact there are so many other harem authors who can fucking breeze through 8,000 words a day, but I just can’t do it right now. I’m so burned out, I mostly don’t even know what happiness is anymore.

Looking Ahead At 2022 (January/2022 Newsletter)

I’m not even sure where to begin.

A lot happened during 2021.

I guess, to help get it all sorted out, let’s first go over that.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2021

Well, first and foremost, A Warm Place fucking exploded.

When I first posted A Warm Place, I did so with a lot of hope, but also a lot of reservations. I really span the chasm between hopeful and hopeless. For a little while there in January, I was feeling pretty abysmal with the reception the novel was getting, as I’d put a LOT of work into it. And then, abruptly, it took off. And it’s gone strong since. So I got right to work on the sequels. And consequently, this series consumed most of 2021. Which is cool, don’t get me wrong. It was fun enough to write, and people really seemed to like it, and that is awesome. But good lord did it take a toll. After AWP7 I needed a break, and then after AWP8 I needed one even more. I was intending to get AWP9, the final novel in the series, done before now, but that didn’t happen. Mainly because of Raw. Which we’ll get to. Anyway, A Warm Place was a huge success for me, and I’m really happy about that, and I wanted to thank everyone who read it and reviewed it and helped spread the word about it around.

Near the beginning of the year I wrapped up Like A Fine Wine. Not my best project, for a number of reasons, but it got done.

I managed to get Valkyries back up, so yay.

I felt compelled to write sequels to all of my (former) freebie shorts, and so I did. And then I felt compelled to write sequels to those sequels, to make them all trilogies, and managed to get Pink, Blind Date, & The Pale Redhead out. The others are coming and I’ll discuss them more below.

I started writing Our Own Way on a bit of a whim and am very surprised by the reaction it got. I had hoped to get a bit further in it, too, but a number of things really kicked my ass towards the end of the year.

And, finally, the big one. Raw. After realizing I needed to take a break and start something else after A Warm Place 8, I finally sat down and wrote my caveman story I’ve been talking about for like two years now. And it fucking exploded. Raw has changed the course of my whole career.

Looking back over my previous yearlong statement at the beginning of 2021, I’m surprised that I managed to do almost half of what I set out to. I still intend to start a new pen name, but I’ve drifted away from the concept of a website store…for now. At the very least, it’s been boxed up and put away in the metaphorical attic. Not gone, but put away. Maybe someday I’ll pull it back out. I also did indeed make a return to serial fiction, though it wasn’t the idea I first had, but it taught me that serial fiction is a bad idea. For me anyway.

Last but not least, I can reveal that I secretly helped create an EMP disaster survival harem! Back near the beginning of the year, I worked on a 12-part serial fiction with a friend and called it Desperate Times. It did okay. As I learned more, I realized it’d make WAY more sense to re-release them as novels. And so that’s what is being done. More are to come, but here’s the first book. It covers roughly the first four parts of the serial, and has 9,000 new words of content. If you like my stuff, you’ll almost certainly like this series. Also, just to be clear, because there have been questions, Lara X. Lust is not my new pen name, nor is it me. I do not run that name, just do some work with them.

I didn’t get my shit together in 2021. If anything, I fell apart harder than ever before, for a number of reasons, but I did manage to have the most successful year of my life. So that’s pretty cool.

Now, let’s talk about this year.

WHAT I INTEND TO DO IN 2022

Things have changed. Sort of.

I learned a lot last year. Honestly, I learned more in 2021 than I had in all the years combined before that. Consequently, I’d like to explain why I want to make the changes that I’m going to be making.

To explain that, we need a little history lesson.

In the beginning, there was erotica.

I stumbled awkwardly onto the scene in late 2014 with my weird little sci-fi erotic serial fiction Hellcats. It worked. People bought it, I could write more of it, so that’s basically what I did. I experimented here and there with slightly longer works, but I basically just hustled my fucking ass off and wrote erotic serial fiction all the way through 2015, 2016, & 2017. When 2018 hit, something changed in me. I just could not write serial fiction any longer. By then, I’d been wanting to make the change to longer fiction for awhile, and with the success of Demoness, then my longest title ever, both financially and with how much fun I had writing it, I knew I had to make the switch. I did, managing to buy myself some time by re-releasing all my serial fiction as novels with new cover art.

By then, I was beginning to get the idea that there was this type of erotica called harem. The concept seemed simple enough: one dude banging multiple chicks. Technically speaking, the first thing I ever published, Hellcats, was harem. So through 2018, 2019, & 2020, I drifted closer to harem, gaining a dawning awareness of the rules of the genre. Because I am not a social person by nature, it took me quite awhile to begin interacting with the harem community. Finally, in 2021, I did. This is when I began learning a lot.

I learned about a lot of rules, and how I was breaking or bending them, and all about the expectations of the genre.

Probably the biggest thing I learned, and this genuinely fucking blows my mind, is that harem and erotica do not necessarily mix.

I still have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around that.

I don’t want to really get into the rules & regulations of harem, because it’s strangely complex, but also hotly debated, and that’s not really what this is about. What this is about is one of my biggest takeaways from this was: I am at a large disadvantage if I want to be a harem author. And I do want to be a harem author. Harem offers me the most freedom as an author. Quite by accident, I stumbled into almost the perfect genre. I really like writing about action and adventure, I really like writing about sex, I really like writing about a protagonist having multiple girlfriends, I really like writing about monster girls and alien girls and other inhuman girls. All of these are components of the harem genre. Plus, it’s just fun to write.

Unfortunately, it’s obvious that I have some stuff holding me back. Surprisingly, one of the biggest things that has come up again and again is the fact that I have a female pen name. This is one of the reasons I want to start a second pen name. Obviously this time it will be a male one. Another huge thing holding me back is my erotica past.

Now we can finally talk about some of the changes I’ve made recently.

Something really important I learned about being a successful indie writer is that you want to have a lot of ‘entry points’ into your library. Or basically, as many titles, be they novels or shorts or collections, that people can come across in the wild, pick up and read, by themselves. As in, there’s no previous required reading to understand and enjoy the story. Although it sounds counterintuitive, in a roundabout way, this was why I fired up four shared universes. My ‘theme’ as an author wasn’t outer space or fantasy or paranormal romance, it was, among other things, dudes banging inhuman women. So I wanted fans of sci-fi and fans of fantasy and fans of post-apocalyptic and fans of paranormal romance all to be able to find something. Many entry points. That was also why I wrote the Misty Vixen Starter Pack and the freebie short stories, and why I experimented with making some of my novels free. Exposure is everything, discoverability is your biggest obstacle as an author.

However, and this is a thing I have learned harshly: your titles should be representative of your library and what you have on offer. And this is where the problem comes in. In the beginning, I had erotica on offer. But now, I have harem novels on offer. And those two things bump. If some harem reader who has never heard of me before stumbles across, say, Wanderlust, or Desire, and reads it, they’re not going to be happy. And that’s why I removed the subtitles from every book that isn’t harem, that’s why I added ‘This is NOT harem’ in the description of every non-harem novel. It’s why I made the freebies not free anymore, because they became bad advertisements for my library, because they don’t represent what I’m writing nowadays.

Unfortunately, I’m at a bit of an impasse. I’ve been told that if I really want to deal with it in a brutally efficient way, I would just unpublish everything that isn’t harem. But I can’t do that. That’s like…thirty novels. I put a LOT of work into them, and those stories are what a lot of readers got started on. Taking them down just feels wrong. I still like most of them and I’m still glad I wrote most of them. They were fun and I like the characters and stories.

So, instead, I’ve done everything I can to separate them from the harem stories. I think, someday, maybe next year depending on how this year goes, I may take them out of the Kindle Unlimited and instead start also offering them on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. Maybe, we’ll see. Sometimes it’s better to just keep things simple, though.

So that covers why I’m making all these changes: I’m trying to become a harem author.

Now, I have three more things to discuss: the roundup of where I stand with all my varied projects, and also my new pen name. And finally, we’ll finish this off with a bullet point list of what I hope to accomplish in 2022, as well as a brief section dedicated to specifically January. First the roundup.

I’ve been saying for a little while now that I’m intending to wind down my shared universes, as they have largely run their course and served their purpose. I’m closer than ever to doing that. So here’s a little look.

PARANORMAL UNIVERSE

  • This universe is now officially closed (again). I know I said that before, but then I had to write two more Pink stories. But now I have. And so it’s done for real this time. Honestly, Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy have never truly worked for me. It’s not impossible, but I don’t see myself returning to this scene.

POST-APOCALYPTIC UNIVERSE

  • This is finished. I had intended to write two more series, but I ultimately realized that they would actually be much better combined into one, original series that isn’t part of the universe. I’m not saying it’s impossible that I’ll never return to this universe, as I do have a lot of love for it, but the future is simply too crowded for right now. There’s other Post-Apocalyptic universes I want to explore. But maybe someday, years from now, I’ll return. I do have a few ideas.

SCIENCE FICTION UNIVERSE

  • This one has a bit more to do. One final series. The follow-up to Like A Fine Wine. I’m admittedly feeling iffy on this one. I committed to it, so I’ll do it, but I’m kinda worried. Like A Fine Wine didn’t go as well as I’d originally intended. And I’ve never actually written a sequel series before. I’m extremely reluctant to go back on a promise, but at the same time, it’s next to impossible to force myself to write something I truly don’t want to. And honestly, I think readers would be able to pick up on it. On top of that, it slows down EVERYTHING. While I was writing Like A Fine Wine, writing became a nightmare. I dreaded working on any project. So I just can’t say. The only good news, I suppose, is that I can kick this particular can down the road. I literally don’t have time to think about it right now, and probably won’t be able to actually reexamine it until 2023 because of all the work I have to do on other projects. However, beyond that, there’s nothing left in this universe. I originally intended to write a hurt-comfort story set on an island, but I’ve since realized it would actually make more sense to roll it into a completely separate series in another universe, so that’s what happened to that.

FANTASY UNIVERSE

  • This one has the most work left. I need to write Large & Lovely III and Snakeskin III, both of which I hope to wrap up sometime soon as well. I also need to write the Epilogue novella to Lust & Adventure. And finally, I’m going to reboot Demoness. This universe probably won’t be closed out for awhile, but in reality, it’ll just be focused on Demoness. I want Demoness to be pretty big and epic, and it will pull from all the other stuff I’ve written in this universe, and will likely go on for years and years from now, as it will be a passion project, not a moneymaker, and thus I’ll be able to take more time to write it in the background. And, like, can I just say how fucking excited I am for the Demoness rewrite? I already have the cover for it made. The woman who made the originals drew it for me and I found a fucking cool new font and I’ve got a lot of ideas. The first novel is going to basically cover Books 1 & 2, with some expansion and more coherency in the storytelling, and probably be about as long as Demoness IV (my longest novel ever) was. I’m thinking all of them are going to be 100,000+ words now. Which means they’ll take a lot longer to write, but whatever, it’ll be worth it. Also, this will be a full rewrite, so even though the plot will be similar at first, it’s still all new words. No copy/pasting.

STAND ALONE PROJECTS

  • A WARM PLACE: As mentioned above, A Warm Place 9 will be the final novel in the series, and at some point I’ll release The Complete Series. That being said, I’ve been toying around with an idea or two for another series set in this universe. I’m very on the fence about it. On the one hand, I like these ideas, on the other, I have so many other things to write, and I’ll have just gotten done writing the longest series I’ve ever written when I wrap this one up. Maybe I’ll come back in a few years. That being said, it will not be about Chris. It will be a new protagonist. Probably.

  • OUR OWN WAY: I’m about halfway finished with this series at the moment. I’m looking at eight or nine total novellas and then a Complete Edition. I’m definitely going to wrap this one up this year, and then I’m done, like, forever, with serial fiction. I’m kind of kicking myself because judging by the reaction I got from this, I could have been MUCH more successful if I’d just made these full novels with proper cover art. I think from the outside it looks successful but compared to A Warm Place or Raw, it’s basically making pennies. And don’t get me wrong, not everything is $, but after awhile, you get better about seeing opportunities, and realizing when you fucked an opportunity up. Regardless, I’m happy with this series. It’s been very fun to write, and I really love how much people love it. I’m going to write another series kind of like this, but in a sci-fi setting.

  • RAW: So this is my main focus for 2022. I am positive I will not be able to finish the entire series this year, even pumping out a novel a month. I have a lot of material to work with and a lot of ideas. Basically, expect Raw, Raw, and more Raw all this year.

  • OTHER: I will discuss this below, because it involves the other thing I need to talk about, my pen name.

Okay, so, first of all, I have a name picked out, and no I’m not saying what it is yet. Main reason for that is because I am nowhere near ready to launch it yet. I thought for a long time about how I want to handle this new pen name and this is what I have decided. Once launched, I’m going to basically split my ideas in two. My new pen name will handle my more action-oriented material, whereas Misty Vixen will handle A) Old ideas that need to be written, B) Chill slice-of-life fiction, and C) Weird-ass stuff that might absolutely tank. Some of my ideas are experimental, some of my ideas are, I’ve been told, fucking awful in terms of harem. I still want to write them, but I don’t want them to poison the well, as it were. Instead, I might as well just poison the well that’s already been poisoned, (according to a lot of readers, serious some people fucking hate me over on Reddit). This seems like a nice compromise.

I want to have several novels written and ready to go before I launch my new pen name. I have also been advised by several other authors in the genre that I’m kind of shooting myself in the foot by writing such long series. That’s only really sustainable if I’m, like, Logan Jacobs or Eric Vall. Which hey, apparently I’m not that good of a writer, but oh well. What I need to be doing is writing short stuff, like 3-4 novel series, that can end, or can keep going, depending on if people like it or not. I have to admit, I’m not super fond of this approach, but I can’t argue with the logic.

That being said, I’m taking a slightly similar approach to this new pen name as I did with Misty Vixen, in that I want to have several genres on offer, they just won’t be shared universes. I’ve got a hardcore survival series I really want to write first. It’s sci-fi and, yep, you guessed it, in a winter setting. I’m debating about what I want the second series to be, but I’ve got a couple of really fucking cool Post-Apocalyptic ideas. We shall see.

I honestly don’t know when I will be ready to launch this new name. I can’t even promise it’ll be this year. I sure want it to be, but my mental health took a massive dive in 2021. I’d really like to believe that it will get better in 2022, but even if it does, Raw still takes precedence.

All right, we’re at the end. Let’s wrap this up.

2022 Agenda

  • Write 9 more Raw novels.

  • Finish A Warm Place.

  • Finish Our Own Way.

  • Write Snakeskin III, Large & Lovely III, and Lust & Adventure - Epilogue.

  • Assist with more Desperate Times novels.

  • Write first Demoness reboot novel?

  • Launch new pen name?

  • Rework a lot of cover art. I’ve been in the process of tracking down new artists, and an old one, and I’m working on getting some of my covers redone. This is one of the last things I want to do as part of closing out my old library. I’ve spent years fiddling with my books and I’ve finally admitted to myself that it’s costing me too much time and money. So I’ve decided to give everything one last going-over. Haven is in the process of being re-covered, and I think the covers are amazing. Parasexual and Like A Fine Wine will get the same treatment from the same artist. I also intend to get most of the Collections re-covered by my old cover artist who made most of the covers you see today. I also want to get the Sex & Survival novels, and Amazonian’s Love re-covered.

  • I’m tossing around the idea of having drawings of side and minor characters from my varied series created just for fun. If I do, they’ll be hosted here on the site like the others.

January 2022 Agenda

  • Publish Raw II

  • Publish Large & Lovely - The Complete Trilogy

  • Publish Snakeskin - The Complete Trilogy

  • Publish Our Own Way 6 (Hopefully)

Wish me luck, and I hope you all have a good 2022.

A Change of Plans

Well, this is unexpected.

Raw is, like, exploding in popularity.

Before now, my highest ever ranking in the Kindle Store, which calculates sales data in real time (supposedly) for every title available in the entire store (that isn’t free), so we’re talking literally millions here, was somewhere in the 1200s, and that was A Warm Place 7. It also didn’t last that long. My books tend to peak and then fall off rather quickly after launch.

Certainly my A Warm Place novels have done better than anything I have ever published, but this is unprecedented for me.

Raw has broken my record for roughly the 12th time in a row, reaching a mind-bending #439 in the Kindle Store.

That is fucking insane.

When I launched Raw, I had the hope that it might be able to edge out AWP7 for highest ranking. I had distant hopes that MAYBE it might breach the Top 1000. Something I’ve never actually done before.

Clearly, it shattered those expectations and then some.

I remember stating back near the end of 2019 that I would be very stupid not to focus on Haven, because it was my strongest earner. I felt similarly with A Warm Place in 2021.

CLEARLY, I feel this way about Raw. For whatever reason, people seem to be responding very strongly to it, and my instincts (and some other authors) are basically telling me to just ditch everything else and get to work on RAW II.

I’m somewhat reluctant to change my plans, but I just can’t argue with this. This is a rare opportunity. I have never, in my life, been presented with so obvious an example of ‘strike while the iron is hot’.

My work over the past few weeks has been extraordinarily slow. The reason for this is because I’ve been feeling very poorly. It’s weird, because I’m not sick, but I do have some persistent symptoms. Mostly weakness, like I can’t wake up fully. That has made focusing on writing next to impossible. The good news is that it seems to finally be passing, and I have finally made it to the doctor to get some bloodwork done and maybe determine if there’s a problem.

The change that I’m making is that I will be going full force on Raw II and getting it done as soon as possible. As of this moment, I have the novel planned out, and the cover art is being made. (It’s got Rylee on it.)

I’m more reluctant now to talk about the future of Raw, because when I did that with A Warm Place, I ended up contradicting myself many times. Suffice to say, Raw is the most extensively planned out series I have ever written, by a lot. I’ve got the island mapped out, the tribes and races, and all of the major plot points worked out up to the climax, where the series could stop, or possibly continue. I’ll have to see. I think I can safely say that I can get a dozen novels out of this series, and that’s largely without filler. I see a lot of readers complain about the more popular harem novels being stuffed with filler and I try to avoid that as much as possible nowadays.

I’ll be trying to make regular progress on A Warm Place 9, but I’m no longer sure when I’ll have it done. I do apologize for this, I honestly thought I’d have more time, but not writing Raw II as soon as possible would be like throwing away a winning ticket.

Obviously this is going to push back the free shorts trilogy releases and Lust & Adventure Epilogue.

That’s all I’ve got. Diving into RAW II now.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (December 2021)

Here we are at the end of another year. Although it feels like the end of a decade after all the shit that’s happened.

So, what happened in November?

It was close, but I publish Raw!

I also managed to get Our Own Way 5 out!

I managed to get most of Pink 3 written. I also took down all five of the freebie stories, which were no longer freebies, and also their sequels. I will be republishing them as Complete Trilogies as I write each third short. I’m hoping to get those done over the next month or two, but A Warm Place 9 and Our Own Way takes priority. That being said, I’m setting Our Own Way aside for a moment. I need a break from it and to just let it settle for a bit. I honestly am still surprised people like it so much. It’s definitely made me reconsider taking a bigger stab at slice-of-life stuff.

As for what’s up in the coming month, I’m very much hoping to get A Warm Place 9 out. I also think now is the time to talk about A Warm Place as a whole.

When I started rewriting it last year, I had a lot of plans. Those plans changed again and again over the course of 2021. Like, this series has gone through more plan changes than literally anything I have ever written for a number of reasons. Some of it is my own personal taste, some of it was logic, some of it was emotional. At one point I was pretty seriously considering hitting 15 novels, and then I trimmed that down to 12. After the difficulties of the last few months, combined with my growing knowledge of what makes sense to do and what doesn’t make sense to do, I’ve finally realized that A Warm Place 9 will be a perfect place to end it.

I was looking over my plans and this just makes the most sense. I’m getting tired of writing it, and I think people are getting tired of reading it. I’m definitely seeing diminishing returns with each book released now. It hit its peak somewhere around Book 6. Writing about Chris and the others has been a lot of fun, but I think it’s time for them all to settle down after one last adventure.

That being said, I don’t know if new content set in the A Warm Place universe is out of the question. I’ve got a couple of ideas for series. I really liked the whole down-to-earth characters and situations and the more realistic gritty survival. Honestly, this has gotten me more into the idea of writing about disaster survival, because there’s a lot of ways that can go and it’s fun to engage with. So yeah, maybe another series or two might not be out of the question in the A Warm Place universe, but it’ll be awhile, because I am going to need a long break from it after writing this next one.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll get A Warm Place 9 published by the end of the month, and then sometime after that I’ll get The Complete Series out. (I am SO not looking forward to formatting that. It’s going to be a nightmare.) Once it’s done, I’ll get to work on RAW II, and somewhere in the background I’ll be working on getting the freebies trilogies out so I can finally call them done and close out a few universes, and I’ll work on Our Own Way 6 once I feel saner.

Also, in case you missed it, I have a SubReddit.

That’s about it. Wish me luck, I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and it has been shaping up to be a really, really bad winter this year.

Raw Chapter I Preview

Okay, here it is, the first look at my long-awaited caveman fantasy series.

If you are a patron, you can also read Chapter II here.

He awoke to the sound of the sea, and the mournful call of carrion birds.

Water, frigid and cruel, washed up beneath him, shocking him awake. He gasped, or tried to, but some liquid had settled in his lungs. The gasp turned quickly to a violent fit of coughing and he rolled over, his body spasming as it attempted to eject the foreign matter. He was vaguely aware of a sharp, irritated caw! as he vomited the seawater out in hard contractions. As he finished, left dry-heaving several times, he opened his eyes.

A bleak desolation awaited him.

He lay upon a cold, rocky beach, the seawater coming in on gray waves, like liquid stone. A few feet from him, a giant black bird rested. It peered at him with shiny dark eyes, head tilted. It cawed at him and hopped from one skinny foot to the next. It had a scar on its large black beak. Seawater beaded on shiny feathers. As he tried to wave it off, he realized just how weak he was. His body felt ancient and withered.

A muffled sound escaped his throat and he swatted at the bird once more, coughing. It let out another irritated caw and hopped back two paces, but otherwise remained. The man slowly sat up. Even this act was torturous in how much it seemed to require from him. Breathing slowly and heavily, he sat on a rocky beach beneath a dull slate sky next to a huge bird that was probably waiting for him to die, and he wondered.

“Where am I?” he asked softly.

His voice sounded strange to him. He surveyed the area around him.

Long, lonely stretches of rocky shoreline to his left and his right. More birds, and other, more uncertain shapes farther away, lurked. Ahead of him, the vast yawning eternity of the sea. Which sea? He could not recall.

Behind him…

He twisted around, and several things popped in his back, along his spine, relieving tension. Behind him was dirt and trees, a dense forest swaying in the winds coming in off the sea. A cold wind gusted across him, and he shivered.

That brought on a great deal of pain.

The pain was faint, numbed by the cold and by…

He returned his attention to the front and looked down at himself. He was naked. Not a scrap of clothing on him at all. All he wore was a mélange of bruises and scratches and cuts. They ached and hurt and stung, and he could tell his suffering ran deeper than that, his muscles and bones hurting, but it was all faraway for now.

Another wave crashed upon the shore, this one more violent than the last, and hit him, snapping him out of his dazed state.

He needed warmth, shelter, a fire.

Or he would die.

The man rose slowly, his legs unsteady, his whole body as uncertain as his mind, but he only lost his balance once before standing. He looked over at the crow, which lingered, staring at him with obvious curiosity.

Another thought occurred to him, one that erupted inside of him and brought on an intense panic. It was so powerful he spoke it, too, aloud.

“Who am I?”

Another wave crashed at his feet more intensely than the last, and in the far distance, thunder cracked the sky, threatening rain. But he could not move, not until he had answered that question. Hugging himself, rubbing his arms, he thought furiously. Images came to him, emotions attached to most of them, but it was all so confused and jumbled. A bewildering proliferation of memories assaulted him as he sorted frantically through, trying to find something familiar, something that meant anything to him.

And then he had it, a single, short word.

A name.

Jak.

That was his name, he was sure of it. Jak let out a sigh of relief, but the feeling was short lived. Lightning split across the stone gray clouds, and almost immediately more thunder cracked and boomed. His heart lurched to match it and he looked as the crow took to flight with another call. He watched the huge thing gain altitude and disappear off to his right, heading deeper inland. It seemed like as good a direction to go as any, so Jak began to follow the bird, though he quickly lost sight of it. He walked away from the rocky beach, the stones painful on his bare feet, and came to a strip of land that was mostly dirt that ran parallel to the shoreline.

Jak walked.

He thought.

He tried to remember, rubbing his arms and looking around as stronger winds gusted off the sea and battered the nearby forest.

Already, the memories were slipping away. Becoming more clouded, more convoluted. Something was wrong, he knew that much.

A bad thing had happened.

Even apart from the obvious situation he now found himself in, that notion persisted. He clung to that, tried to use it as a beacon in the mists of amnesia. There were things he could recall. Impressions, if not specifics.

Jak recalled fighting. Lots of fighting.

Even as he thought of combat, saw images of broken bodies and sprays of blood, his hand ached for some kind of weapon. He felt naked without one, but another thought promised him that he could defend himself, even unarmed, if that particular desperation fell onto him. Still though, he began tracking the dirt and grass around him for some sort of armament. All the stones and sticks he saw were insufficient.

Another thought came to him, one that was as clear to him as his name had been: he was an outcast of his people.

That brought an unexpected jolt of several different emotions, all screaming to him at once. Terror. Rage. Guilt…

But a certainty that he was right. A conviction that he was right.

That one stopped him and Jak stared down at his muddy feet, shivering in the wind, for a moment ignoring all other things.

He hunted fervently for the context. Why was he so certain that he was right to do what he had done...whatever that was? He was an exile of his people, this specific piece of knowledge was available to him, but lacking context, it felt almost meaningless. Why? Whatever he had done to gain their ire, to be punished, to be made into a pariah, he felt strangely certain that it was the right thing to do. Not only that, but it was the only thing to do.

Somewhere too close for comfort, something growled.

That was a sound that forced itself through everything else, and Jak jerked his head to the right. Another person he could probably fight with his bare hands, if it came down to it, but a wolf or one of the big cats or the giant lizards?

No, he would be beyond saving then.

Shelter. He needed shelter.

Rain was coming, and he was already cold from laying on the shore. Jak looked up and tried to take a measure of the light from the sky, but it was difficult. The clouds covered the skies from horizon to horizon. The ones above him were stone gray, but he saw some farther off, some that seemed to be drawing closer quickly, that were the dark gray of flint. Those were the ones swollen with a heavy rain, and they were eager to unleash themselves on the land.

He knew he should be inside, or beneath something before then, given his nude state.

Ahead, the land seemed to dip, while the shoreline rose. Jak began moving forward with greater intent. There was a depression in the land, a trench with a wall of trees to the right and a wall of earth and rock to the left. There might be a cave, or even an overhang in that wall of earth. Some part of his mind whispered to him that there would be risk of flooding this close to the shore, but it was a risk he would have to take.

As he strode towards the trench, finding the pain in his battered body becoming more acute as his blood flowed more freely, something else came to him. A sharp memory, this one felt recent, though hazy. He remembered…

A figure, standing over him, against that same stone-gray sky.

The figure was tall and...blue? Jak pondered over that as he walked on. What species did he know that was blue-skinned? Or that painted themselves blue? He thought of the elves and their light tan skin. He thought of...of...what were they called? Large, green, scaly. They were big and dangerous, with sharp teeth, but not monsters, no, they could talk and build, his memories whispered to him. Jak looked down again at his own flesh.

Marred and bruised though it was, he could see a tawny bronze sheen to his skin. It covered him head to toe, uniformed and smooth. Not the result of time spent in the sun, then, though that thought brought on a cascade of sweaty days toiling beneath an unforgiving ball of flame in the sky. Practicing. Practicing what?

Fighting.

He had a brief but vivid vision of himself swinging a bone-club into a man’s skull and crushing it, blood and pulpy stuff flying out in a vicious spray…

Jak turned back to the original memory. Who was the blue-skinned, tall thing he remembered seeing over him while he lay, nearly dying, on the rocky coast?

After a moment, he let out a soft grunt of frustration and dismissal. Perhaps he was confused, or seeing untruths, his mind clouded by an injury. Perhaps it was an earlier memory, some other shore, some other gray sky.

He didn’t think that was true, but he could not be certain.

Jak made it down into the trench and the natural wall to his left rose until it towered over him to the height of three men. The light was fading, and the winds were coming more quickly now, accompanied by other cracks of thunder that seemed to shake the very earth around him. That shelter needed to happen soon, and then he could see about making a fire. But as he hunted the wall in the fading light, Jak felt a bolt of searing pain tear through his skull. He groaned, coming a halt, grabbing his head.

A fresh bolt of pain came again as his hand touched a particularly sensitive spot. He winced, hissing at the sheer agony of it, and pulled his hand back down in front of his eyes, expecting his fingers to be wet with blood. They weren’t, but the pain persisted. It was getting harder to think, to focus.

Something shifted up ahead of him, farther along the trench, something that garnered his attention reflexively and instantly.

Jak looked up, fear flooding his gut, as a dark gray shape detached itself from the dense treeline a little ways ahead of him.

A wolf.

And not a small wolf either.

A quick survey of his immediate area told him that there weren’t even any stones of any decent size he could grasp and use as a quick weapon. The wolf was coming towards him now, head lowered, teeth bared, growling deep in its throat.

His mind, abused though it was, shifted into survival mode and ran quick calculations.

He didn’t like his odds. Another quick survey of the area yet again turned up nothing, but he did see a cave in the wall to his left.

Shelter! A place to get in out of the encroaching storm.

But this wolf, creeping closer, teeth bared, a primal promise of brutal slaughter…

Jak bunched his hands into fists, considering the best way to take it down. If he could move in just the right way, he’d be able to tear its throat out, or perhaps take an eye. That would dissuade it from attacking him. Either that or enrage it past the point of madness and make it all the more dangerous.

The time to decide was nearly upon him.

Thunder roared almost directly overhead, making him jump and giving the wolf pause. That was when the rain opened up, a curtain of droplets plummeting across the land with a nearly imperceptible speed, racing towards him from the seaside.

He and the wolf were drenched in seconds.

Jak prepared to fight. Even though he was wounded and his head felt like it had met with a cloud, he wanted to kill the wolf.

That was meat.

That was food.

Beneath the layers of encroaching numbness and pain, he knew he was hungry. Food was fuel and he would need it.

As he tensed, shifted his weight so that he had a more stable stance, his mind filling with thoughts, visions of blood and death, his own hands covered in–dripping with–blood, all that bravado abruptly collapsed like an old log deep in the forest as three more wolves slunk out of the treeline to his right.

One wolf, he might be able to fight.

But four? Unarmed and injured? No.

Certain death now approached him on large paws, all teeth and shaggy gray fur and black, black eyes.

Jak ran.

He sprinted into the forest with all that he was.

The forest was much darker now as the rain began to fall. Jak grunted as he bumped into a tree, his head spinning from whatever injury had stolen his memory, stomach roiling like the sea he fled from. He rebounded off another tree, stumbled.

His foot caught on an exposed root and he nearly went sprawling, instead managing to wrench his shoulder as he caught himself painfully on an outstretched branch.

Behind him, a wolf howled.

Something shifted within him, something fundamental and crucial at the core of his being. Something important. The world seemed to slide around him for a brief sliver of time, everything growing brighter, sharper, and then everything slammed back into place and he could see. More than that, he seemed to know.

When he began running again, Jak didn’t bump into anything, even as he picked up speed. He cold sprinted through the woods, dodged a tree, ducked beneath a heavy branch, shifted so that his foot wouldn’t hit that rock sticking up out of the ground.

The air carried a hundred different scents.

Flowers, creatures, the sea and the rain, the earth…

Living things that surrounded him in all directions. Trees and plants and four-legged beasts, birds flying overhead, seeking shelter. Small furry things and insects burrowing in the loose earth beneath his feet.

His mind sorted through it like a flash of lightning.

Wolves behind him, closing in.

Something large and dangerous off to his right.

A potential threat somewhere above and to the left, among the branches.

Nothing ahead that he could sense. Jak ran faster, his motion through the darkening forest becoming fluid, smoother. He vaulted over a fallen log, slipped between a pair of trees, raced up a hill, slid down the other side, kept on pushing…

Jak could sense it was burning some reserve in his body, some crucial source of energy, something that was already drastically low.

He couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

But he didn’t have to. The wolves were behind him, the other things he had sensed gone too, and nothing new had appeared on his periphery of awareness. Slowing to a stop, he came into a tiny clearing and looked around.

Abruptly, the heightened awareness dropped away, and he staggered. Almost falling to his knees, Jak looked around, knowing that he needed to get in out of the cold and right now. There. At the edge of the little clearing, he saw a huge, hollowed-out fallen tree. It would have to do. He walked over, breathing heavily, his body hurting everywhere, his movements sluggish. Sleep was coming, whether he wanted it to or not.

In the wan light from the dim skies above, Jak looked into the hollow log. He’d have to duck to get inside and it leaked in a few places, but overall, it was shelter. Not ideal shelter, but shelter nonetheless.

There was the problem of security, though.

He ducked in and walked the length of the log. It was maybe twice his height lengthwise, and it was open at both ends. Coming out the other end, Jak looked around. His gaze fell on a good-sized rock not too far away.

Overburdened mind working, he judged the size of the rock against the size of the opening on this end of the log. They were roughly similar. It would have to do. Jak walked over, got a grip on the rock, and grunted with effort. His muscles strained as he liberated the rock from its home in the mud and rolled it towards the opening.

It took some doing, but he managed to fit it into the rear exit. Once he got it lodged into place as much as he could, Jak walked back around and in through the front. He gave it a few experimental pushes, then studied the edges.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Nothing big could get in without him noticing, at least.

There was more to do. He should build a fire, make even the most rudimentary bed, look for something to eat, but his body was shutting down.

Even as he thought this, the last vestiges of his strength slipped away, and he sat down in the driest spot, towards the back. Away from the front entrance, but far enough from the rock that it would not crush him if it fell over.

Jak stared at the ring of space the entrance showed, the dark clearing and the trees around it. The plants that hung down. The rain as it fell from the skies. It was very dark now, growing darker with each passing minute, it seemed.

He watched the entrance for as long as he could.

And then he tumbled headlong into unconsciousness.