The Misty Vixen Newsletter (August 2023)

So I’ve got a lot to talk about with this one. But first, let’s talk about the stuff that got released last month!

Links for people who don’t like clicking on images:

A WARM PLACE 5

HAVEN 8

RAW VI

RAW VIII

RAW COLLECTED III

OUR OWN WAY

Before we get into the meat of the matter, I’ll do a quick summary of my present situation in terms of what I’m working on and intend to work on soon.

  • RAW: Just to clarify, this is done! The only thing left to come out is The Complete Series, which will be sometime in 2024, likely early 2024. It may contain a new short story, but I am not sure yet. We’ll see how I feel when I actually get there. If anyone is curious why I am waiting this time around, the answer is, as with all annoying things: $. I have learned the hard way that publishing a complete edition of a finished series too soon can kill sales of individual titles. And I rely on those individual titles.

  • OUR OWN WAY: My primary focus right now. I am hard at work writing Our Own Way 2. I’ve got cover art for 2, 3, & 4 now and they look great. I’m intending to begin posting early access chapters next Monday, (August 7th), probably two per day, Monday - Friday, depending on my mental health. Regardless, I will attempt to get at least one out every weekday. I’m aiming for a late August - early September release date.

  • UNDERGROUND POST-APOCALYPTIC HAREM: I’ll explain more below, but I’m working on a new trilogy and it is going to be published by Royal Guard! Chapters will come to Patreon, otherwise the situation is still developing.

  • LARA X. LUST: I’ve been working on a little mini-series with Lara X. Lust and it should begin posting sometime this month. It’s basically Sci-Fi/Horror. It isn’t an extensive project like Desperate Times, it’s simpler and smaller, kind of just a fun experiment. I’ll let you know more when it comes out.

  • OTHER: Everything else is basically on the back burner as I focus on these other projects.

Okay, that’s everything. Now, let’s discuss the present situation and the future.

From even before the beginning of my career some nearly nine years ago now, I was told one of the golden rules of writing was: It is a marathon, not a sprint. For a long time, I mostly took this to mean that it was going to take time to build a career. And that is extremely true. But now I’m thinking more on the rest of that particular reality, something that a lot of people, I think, don’t consider: For most writers, you don’t ever really reach a point where you get successful and then that’s it, you are just successful until you die. You can be successful and still lose it all, and not necessarily through any fault of your own. You can be successful, but you still need to be putting in consistent effort to maintain that success, and you need to watch out for yourself and, more specifically, your future.

Amazon has always been unstable. A lot of this is due to the inherently unstable nature of any creative market, but a lot of it is also the fact that Amazon has absolute power. They can completely fuck people over, even on accident, and not suffer in the slightest, the same way you crush an ant without even realizing it. Every year or so, they make tweaks to their website that screw with things for authors, and every few years or so, it seems like they make some vast, sweeping decision that upsets damn near everyone and we all have to just get used to the new normal.

I’m not really going to go into the specifics of the latest problem with Amazon because I legitimately don’t know how safe it is to talk about, but suffice to say: It is still causing problems.

More than that, though, I’m fairly certain (this is as close as you can get to certain most of the time with Amazon, because they don’t tell us shit), that they made some kind of tweak to the algorithm in January of this year that made it harder to earn for indies. This is not the first time this has happened. In truth, what I see happening with Amazon publishing is actually an almost perfect mirror of what’s happening with the economic classes in the US: the middle class is being destroyed. It’s becoming harder and harder to get noticed and earn, and the people at the top are, increasingly, those who have giant publishers behind them, those who are already extremely well established, or those who get extremely lucky.

And everyone else can fuck off as far as Amazon is concerned.

I’ve been working for almost nine straight years, publishing dozens and dozens of novels, collections, and shorts. I usually average between half a million and a million plus words written and published per year. Consider that there are authors out there who can get by with publishing one book per year. That is perhaps 100,000 words per year for them. For me, four books a year would be a drastic failure. (I’d like to emphasize, for ME, I know there are authors within this genre that average this and I’m not implying, in any way, that they are failures, although I know that at least a few of them wish they could produce more). My point in all this is that I’m lucky to be where I am, but I also put in a lot of work to get here, and to stay here.

But Amazon is making that harder.

From where I’m at in the present, everything is basically fine. I am earning enough and my only complaint is that I can’t help people in my life as much as I’d like to. But I fear the future. I fear losing the ability to publish, I fear the rising cost of fucking everything, and I fear for the world in general because things just keep getting worse.

Consequently, this has caused me to reassess everything, including some stuff I thought I was done fucking around with. I’ll outline these decisions below. That being said, practically speaking, if all you are interested in is reading new books from me, then very little, if anything, will actually change from your perspective. This is really just for the people who are more deeply interested in my career and decisions related to that.

  • ROYAL GUARD PUBLISHING: For those of you who are not aware, Royal Guard is the publisher behind my audiobooks. So far, my experience with them has been exceedingly good. I learned sometime recently that they are expanding into publishing eBooks as well as audiobooks, and I have opted to sign with them to publish a new series. Remember that underground post-apocalyptic trilogy I mentioned some time ago that I said I found a better use for? That’s where it’s going. I’m still going to be posting it to my Patreon in early access, but basically, Royal Guard will be handling the publishing side of things, which I am extremely grateful for. From the reader side of things there really shouldn’t be much difference.

  • MY BACKLOG: For the love of God, I thought I was done with this one once I packaged up those Collections. But this whole thing with Amazon has caused me to, as I said, reconsider everything, and an idea I’ve entertained every now and then was to put all my stories back up like how they were before, with updated formatting and, in some cases, cover art, and maybe add a little here or there. Now it looks like I’ll be doing that. Which means that some stories are going to get some additional content. I’ll talk about the specifics below, but suffice to say: Collections are coming down starting this month and individual titles are going back up. They will still be in the KU. In short, my reasoning for this is: I would rather have 50 poorly-earning streams of revenue than 4, (the Collections did not sell well), and I also think people care less about me having more or less straight up erotica up alongside my haremlit than I thought they might.

  • EROTIC HAREMLIT: As I mentioned earlier, it’s occurred to me that I’ve been whittling down the number of my sex scenes over the past few years, and that is unfortunately only going to continue as the political climate of Amazon gets even more dicey. Consequently, I would like to have a series every now and then that is just horny as fuck, with lots of sex scenes. This will 99.9% cost me money, in short because working on a title that will earn less instead of on a title that will earn more means I am sacrificing earnings. Which I am willing to do some of the time, because not everything is about $. That being said, one idea I’ve had that may help mitigate the earnings problem is charging 5.99$ instead of 4.99$. An extra dollar might not seem like much, and in truth it really isn’t, but that extra dollar can add up. That being said, I’m not ready to talk about my first extra horny harem yet since I’ve got so much other stuff on my plate.

  • PAPERBACKS: Not much changing here except the pricing. I dropped all the prices of my paperbacks a few years ago because I figured ‘why not?’. Well, Amazon made some changes and now paperbacks cost more to produce, meaning that some of them were actually earning 0.00$ with each sale. I decided to go through and update them all with the most recent cover art and the newer formatting, as well as add in the bonus shorts that I’d since written, and also set a new minimum baseline price of 9.99$. This means that in general I’ll be earning between 1-2$ per sale instead of averaging 25 cents per sale. Some titles will be priced higher because price is determined by length. Our Own Way, for example, had to be 11.99$ because it’s my longest haremlit title ever. I will also be opting out of completed series paperbacks in the future, with the exception of the occasional short trilogy, because they are a huge pain in the ass to put together and I’m forced to charge so much more for them without actually making any additional money from the upcharge. Shorts will be included in the individual paperbacks.

  • INCEST EROTICA/HAREMLIT: I’ve been talking about it forever, and it’s still uncertain how long it’ll be before I actually get to it, but I’ve decided to publish my incest erotica/haremlit under another pen-name on Smashwords. That being said, Kindle-friendly versions and read-on-site versions of the titles will still be available for free. Basically, it’s a ‘support me if you want to’ kind of thing, where you can read it for free, or you can pay for it. Given the difficulty in monetizing incest erotica, I figure it’s not worth the hassle to try and hide it behind a paywall. I will, at the very least, be getting some more stuff up and available before 2024. And I do intend to write at least one serious haremlit true incest series with the same level of attention/detail as my other series. And that’s true incest, none of this ‘step’ bullshit.

  • PATREON, KO-FI, ETC.: I’m still uncertain about this, but I’ll probably be leaning at least a little harder into these types of things. I’ve never been very good with stuff like this, but now that I’m looking towards a more uncertain future, I’ll ruminate on it some more.

I think that’s everything. It might not be because I’ve been having insomnia issues.

Now, let’s talk about my fucking backlog. Again.

First thing’s first: The Collections are coming down.

  • SCI-FI UNIVERSE VOL 01: 08.24.2023

  • FANTASY UNIVESE: 10.01.2023

  • PARANORMAL UNIVERSE: 09.24.2023

  • SCI-FI UNIVERSE VOL. 02: 08.12.2023

Why such an incoherent deactivation schedule? Basically, that’s when each falls out of the KU.

Now, let’s discuss what’s on the menu. There’s a lot to talk about. I would also like to say that this is all in a state of flux. I’m still trying to figure everything out, and I may make a different decision once I actually get to a given project.

  • SCI-FI SHARED UNIVERSE

    • Hellcats: Hellcats 1 - 3 are going back up with few changes. That being said, in the course of writing bonus content, I’ve ended up with nearly a novel’s worth of stuff that takes place after Hellcats 3. So I’m going to try and assemble it into Hellcats 4, with new content being written to make it flow more smoothly. That may be impossible, however, so we shall see. Ideally, I’ll get Hellcats 4 published and then the most recent short, The Life, will serve as a bonus epilogue for The Complete Series.

    • Alien Harem: No changes here.

    • Valkyries: This one, unfortunately, isn’t even going up on Amazon. I’ve decided it’s just not happening. It’s too risky. Something about the trilogy sets Amazon off, so I’m keeping it elsewhere. It is still canon though.

    • Desire: In the course of updating Desire, I realized that I did something dumb by making the bonus content take place between the chapters in the final novel. So I’m just going to make it part of the novel and, for The Complete Series, I’ll be writing a new bonus epilogue short.

    • Like A Fine Wine: The only thing that’s changing here is that The Complete Series will now contain the Epilogue novella I wrote as bonus content. The Epilogue novella will be paired with Like A Fine Wine 4 for the paperback.

    • Exploration: I’ll be uploading the two bonus shorts I wrote with the novella since there’s nowhere else to put them.

    • Amazonian’s Love: I’ll be uploading the bonus content with the novel.

    • Blind Date: No changes here.

    • Like A Sex Toy: Still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with this one. I don’t want to bring back the Starter Pack, because it longer is accurate. I might put together a new collection with additional content and just call it Misty Vixen Collected or something.

  • FANTASY UNIVERSE

    • Wanderlust: Like Hellcats, Wanderlust has amassed a lot of bonus content taking place after the end, so I’ll be attempting to write Wanderlust V.

    • Lust & Adventure: This is the one I’ll be doing the most with. At a certain point, I became discontent with the ending of the trilogy. I’m going to take a shot at writing Lust & Adventure IV. Given it has the least amount of content taking place after its natural conclusion, it’ll require the most extensive work.

    • My Undead Lover: I’ll be posting the bonus content with the novella.

    • Royal Lust: Same here, bonus content with the novel.

    • Large & Lovely: No changes.

    • Snakeskin: No changes.

    • Adventurous: Bonus content to be rolled into the novel.

    • Lay of the Land: See Like A Sex Toy.

  • POST-APOCALYPTIC UNIVERSE

    • Sex & Survival: This one will be going up very soon, as I never actually did anything with it. If it wasn’t such a busy time, I’d consider writing that fourth novel I’ve always thought about, but alas this is not the case. So, basically, no changes.

    • The Pale Redhead: I’m probably going to keep this down since I intend to do a rewrite. The original version willl probably end up as a freebie download from my website.

    • A New World: See Like A Sex Toy.

  • PARANORMAL UNIVERSE

    • Paranormal Passions: Bonus content to be added to The Complete Trilogy, otherwise, no changes beyond formatting.

    • Roommates With Benefits: See Like A Sex Toy.

    • Pink: No changes.

    • Parasexual: The big one of this universe. I believe I am going to give this the Hellcats/Wanderlust treatment and just make a full Parasexual 6. I’m also going to try and get updated covers.

These will not be ‘new releases’, I’ll just be updating the originals. The reason for this is because re-releasing something as a new release is a potentially dicey situation with Amazon, because I can’t fully tell what they consider appropriate. I imagine most of the people reading this probably won’t care about my backlog, so feel free to ignore this. Nothing about this affects any of my haremlit, past, present, or future.

I think that’s everything.

If you have questions, feel free to ask however you feel most comfortable. Leave a comment or e-mail me at mistyvixen@outlook.com or send me a Reddit message or whatever.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (July 2023)

Well this sucks.

A month ago I had all these plans and everything was pretty damn set and certain.

And then everything got completely derailed and fucked up.

Unfortunately, nothing got released last month. Things got very busy over at Royal Guard and the last I heard are still settling down, so that’s why no audiobooks got released. However, I believe that at least something should be coming in July, though I don’t know for sure yet. Once I know, you will know, provided you keep up with my Twitter. As for my own personal situation…

I don’t have a whole lot to offer. I’ve been having a really difficult time this past month. I ran into some problems at the end of May that strained me, but if they had been the only problems I’d run into, I’d be fine right now. However, I barely had two days before abruptly this whole situation with Amazon kicked in. If you don’t know about that, in short: Amazon updated the publishing process with a mandatory question: Does your title contain adult content? If you say yes, you get walled off from like 90% of the store via the algorithm, meaning your sales and thus your career, is extremely hindered. It seems like this can’t possibly be what they intended, however, because…like, what DOESN’T contain ‘adult’ content? Like, every fucking book I’ve ever read has something that you could call ‘adult’. So then where’s the line drawn?

Obviously, because we live in a society that is slowly being destroyed by governments and corporations pretending they give a shit about us, this is about sex. So where is the line drawn? They won’t fucking tell us.

I could go on and on about how massively bullshit this is, but obviously this has caused a big stir.

I’m…still considering my options at the moment. Given what’s on the line (my literal fucking career) I’m nervous and unsure of what to do. I don’t really want to switch to fade-to-black, and I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to do that. But because of the delicate nature of this entire thing, I feel like I can’t really talk about what’s going on behind the scenes.

But, as a consequence of this, (among other things), I’ve got literally SEVEN series in various states of progress right now. I’ll give you a little update on each of them below.

  1. RAW: What I’m working on hardest right now. I’ve got the bonus short set between 7 & 8 written and edited. Raw VIII is over halfway finished. I still intend to have it written and released sometime this month. A bit after that I’ll release Collection III, and then sometime later in the year, or possibly in early 2024, I’ll release The Complete Series. (I’m still learning about when to release Complete Collections. I kinda fucked myself releasing the Complete Collection of A Warm Place so soon after finishing it, as it killed off sales of the individual novels before they would have otherwise naturally died off.)

  2. OUR OWN WAY: The first book is written, edited, covered, 100% ready to go. I’m…still struggling with what to do. I will probably also release it this month. I also will get started on the sequel very soon.

  3. UNDERGROUND POST-APOCALYPTIC TRILOGY: I said in my last post that I was going to write an experimental trilogy to see how hard Amazon fucks me if I do go ahead with saying Yes. However, what little data has trickled in behind the scenes seem to indicate increasingly that this would be stupid as hell. That, basically, doing so would be writing an entire trilogy just to kill it, dead on arrival style. So, I have decided to do something else with this trilogy. I’ll explain what that is when I’m closer to making it happen and have more details ironed out.

  4. COUGAR TRILOGY: This stalled in terms of production, but I’m absolutely making this happen. Not sure when, but I want at least the first novel out this year, ideally the whole trilogy.

  5. DAMAGED PROTAGONIST STORY: So this idea really hit me hard last month. It’s a post-apocalyptic story with a society rebuilding itself, but it’s centered on an emotionally and mentally damaged and struggling protagonist. I don’t want to say much more than that, but when I brought it up a few times, people seemed to be really interested. Given that and the fact that the tale and the characters are still speaking to me, I’ve opted to continue working on it in the background.

  6. HORROR HAREM: Yes, this. While production has completely stalled, I still REALLY fucking want to get this going. I’m amped for this still but it’s had to be put aside for now. It WILL happen though.

  7. HORNY HAREM: So…last week it occurred to me that I’ve been whittling down my sex scenes for years now, and this whole thing with Amazon recently has only reinforced that idea. And it made me think that maybe I should write something that’s just horny as fuck. Or, basically, I don’t hold back on the sex scenes and the horny factor. I quickly came up with an idea and a name that, frankly, I’m SHOCKED no one has used yet. You’ll see what I’m talking about when I reveal more about it. What I can say is that I’m working on it in the background, and I’ll be indulging in two things that are VERY common in haremlit, but which I have never once indulged in before. I’m very curious to see how my take on these two things plays out, and how people like it. All I can say about it for now is that it’s apocalyptic survival and there will be breeding (not one of the two things mentioned above). I’ll also talk more about this one later.

And so yeah, somehow I went from having what was going to be a fairly simple and straightforward time to having a fucking nightmare of a schedule. The rest of the year, and at least some of 2024, is going to be spent getting all this written and out.

I’m going as fast as I can but honestly this whole thing has been absolutely fucking up my mental health, and that makes writing really difficult. I’ve been calming down recently, so that’s nice, but we’ll see how it goes. In short: I’ll be trying to both preserve my mental health and up my production as much as I can over the next few months.

Wish me luck.

Raw VIII Preview

Here is the first chapter of Raw VIII.

The second chapter, and subsequent future chapters, can be read on my Patreon.

The sun burned coldly above them as Jak led his small group across the winter desolation.

It was just visible through the clouds, a pale gray stone glimpsed in a shallow creek, rubbed smooth by the passage of time and water.

The winds were bitter and strong enough that he had considered delaying the journey.

But the situation was getting more dire.

Ahead, he could see the treeline that served as Avat’s Forest’s northern edge.

He led the warparty through the snow, squinting and raising one hand as the wind shifted and began blowing right into his face. At least it wasn’t snowing.

The sun had risen and fallen fifteen times since he had saved Azure.

Much had happened in that passage of time. Niri and Rylee had since relocated to Ara Forest, to live with and help the elves there, and to help integrate their own people to living in the forest, as it was now the safest place on the entire island.

Jak had spent most of his time trekking back and forth between Fair Field and Ara Forest, getting his people and whatever supplies they could spare to the safety of the woodlands. It wasn’t a perfect solution, as there were an increasing amount of corrupted between the two locations, but the monsters did seem to have a slight aversion to the northern forest.

The rest of the time he spent resting, hunting for supplies or food, and, mostly, fighting off corrupted.

While the first days after he had completed his trek of the island and gotten Azure to safety had seen relatively few of the creatures, it was not to last. Or so it had seemed at the time. They had begun attacking in small clusters at first, but then real warparties had come. Not just former humans and elves and karn, but creatures as well.

And then monsters, real monsters.

More of the awful, impossible things that looked more made than born began attacking them, doing some real damage.

Jak and Keeza and Nessa and the others fought them off, almost always losing a few people. It was a difficult way to live, but he had to admit that it could be much, much worse. And he kept expecting it to get that way.

It did, until suddenly it didn’t.

The day before yesterday was the first where there were no attacks. Everyone kept waiting as the sun rose over the cold, barren landscape, hunting for signs of the attack that was coming. The tension kept rising as nothing kept happening, and this continued well into the night. Eventually, everyone went to sleep, or tried to.

The next day, it was even worse.

Still nothing came. No corrupted were sighted.

The sun crawled across the gray sky. The winds tormented the land. The cold persisted. Still no corrupted came as night fell a second time.

That was yesterday, and Jak was feeling the pressure of time and other constraints.

Their time was limited and he had to act.

Moving people from Fair Field to Ara Forest was just a single step on the path that had to be walked if they were to survive this catastrophe. Every day that passed was another day that their enemies could enact whatever dire, evil plans they had concocted. It was also another day that they were consuming precious food.

Azure had told him something several days ago that had frightened him deeply, something none of them had even truly considered. Thinking ahead was possible, but not necessarily obvious to the average person. For the most part, the farthest they thought ahead was a single cycle of seasons, and only then because they had learned from the past that there was a set cycle to the seasons, and that if they wanted to survive winter, the final season in the cycle, they needed to spend the previous seasons leading up to it preparing.

But for the most part, people didn’t think much beyond the next few days.

Azure had pointed out that it was possible that even if they defeated all their enemies and slayed all the corrupted and dealt with the Barrens, they might still die due to a lack of food. The winter had killed much of the plant life and some of the animal life, and the death spell that had been cast over the island had killed much more than that.

What if not enough deer survived the winter? What if they went extinct?

This question could be applied to every form of life on the island, plants included.

And so Jak had spread the word: no hunting, no gathering. The only exception was fish from the ocean. It was still a source of food and the ocean was much larger than the island. So now he was faced with a problem of hundreds upon hundreds of mouths to feed, and a rapidly dwindling reserve of food left to feed them.

A lot had been stored up at Fair Field, but it was already diminishing. What they had left would not see them through the winter, even with half the population moved to Ara Forest. The same was true at every other village.

It wasn’t an immediately dangerous problem, but it would be soon, and so they had been trying to find a way around it ever since. Jak’s first inclination was to ask everyone, every last person, if they knew of any hidden stores or caches of food. Or really of anything, because at this point just about everything would be useful.

They had lost a lot in the attack.

Today was the day that they would begin acting on this knowledge they had gained. He got all sorts of answers. He and Nessa and the other leaders had organized three primary warparties. One would go to the Verdant Valley and to Gather Village, and gather up whatever was left, as well as check any caches in the area or on the way there. The second would go to Wetstone and do the same. The third, Jak’s warparty, would return to Avat’s Forest.

A lot had been left behind during the invasion, and now it was time to see what was left.

At last, they reached the treeline.

Jak paused, holding up his fist, and took a look around. He saw nothing. No movement among the dead forest save for the occasional drift of snow dislodged by the winds. Standing for a long time, he stared, ignoring the cold, the press of time, everything but what his senses told him.

And they told him there was nothing in the forest ahead of them.

He still didn’t like it. Every single time there had been a lack of corrupted so far, it had led to something bad. And they’d run into only a handful on the way here.

Jak motioned for them to continue. He led his warparty into the treeline, taking a less obvious path that would lead them in a more direct route to the northern outpost. He sensed someone getting closer and then Nessa was beside him.

He glanced quickly at her. She looked out of place in the snowbound environment, wrapped up in heavy furs. Karn were tough, but they were at a disadvantage during winter. From what he’d come to understand, they tended to stay in their caves or huts more than any other race when the cold days came.

It was having an effect on her. Since the snowfall began, she’d been quieter and more withdrawn and, just lately, sullen. Normally she was filled with a rowdy kind of hope, and it hurt him to see that stifled. She was sleeping more and she’d lost weight, but, then again, they all had. She was no less fearsome though.

“There’s none here either, huh?” she murmured, breaking a silence that had stayed with them most of the way here.

“It seems that way,” he replied.

“Where could they have gone?”

“I wish I knew.”

Some had postulated that perhaps the death spell had worn off, that maybe they had simply collapsed and died a true death after enough time. But the handful they did enter cut against this theory. Jak supposed it wasn’t impossible, that all but the heartiest of corpses had fallen to be buried in the snow.

It didn’t strike him as correct though.

So far, they had yet to see another Revek. Or, if they had, he had not heard of it. He was absolutely certain that they were hidden away somewhere, probably in the Barrens, in some secret, well-defended place, and they were planning something.

Something dark and dangerous and deadly for everyone else on this island.

He kept thinking that the corrupted must be hidden somewhere, some location he was not aware of, some secret place. They were hidden and gathering, perhaps even being strengthened somehow, and they would launch a massive attack on his settlement, or others.

That was why it was important to do this now, and quickly, while there was still time.

Of course, that didn’t even deal with the other problem that they may be facing. The embyr were still an unknown element to the overall situation. They always had been, but now it was worse. Jak had thought on it much during the days and the nights.

In the end, he had decided on a course of action. They had sent runners to the embyr lands, with careful instructions from Keeza. Whatever news they brought back would decide the course of action he, and as many others as he could muster, would take.

If there were no karn slaves seen within the embyr lands, then he would leave them be while he dealt with the Revek and the corrupted.

If there were karn slaves there, and if there was no obvious or immediate way to deal with the Revek and corrupted by the time he learned of it, then Jak would muster his warparty, his army, and he would march on the embyr.

It occurred to him that this task would be even more difficult than before, because if there were karn slaves, it meant that it would be too dangerous to bring any karn with them. They would become mind-gone and turn against them.

After that incident with Nessa, he knew it to be true.

Even she, with all her might and resistance, could not stop the power of the corrupted Star Crystals.

And the karn were the main fighting force on the island, meaning they would have to make due without them. Because he couldn’t just leave them there. And, on top of that, he was going to need every last living soul on the island to defeat the corrupted.

Well, every last soul but the embyr.

Even if they offered an alliance, he was fairly certain that he would not take it.

Jak paused again as they reached the northern outpost. He felt a tearing at his heart as he saw the dilapidated, desolate state of it. A few of the huts had collapsed and everything was covered in snow. It had a feel of eerie abandon, not that dissimilar to the old karn villages they’d visited. There didn’t seem to be anything living around it.

Making quick hand motions to the others, he had a handful of them remain behind to watch their backs and brought the rest forward with him to clear it. Their feet crunching lightly in the snow, they made brisk work of searching the outpost for threats.

Jak took one of the remaining huts and peered cautiously inside, his adze out and ready. It was cold and dim within, and he felt a curious mixture of annoyance and hope as he saw that one of the baskets holding grain had been disturbed by something, a rabbit or a deer maybe, and somewhat recently. He took it as a good sign.

Finishing up his search of the outpost and finding nothing, Jak made quick motions to everyone, and they all got to work, Nessa leading them now. They dug into the derelict and collapsed huts, hunting for supplies, food and tools and medicinal plants, anything.

Jak walked over to the boulder and assumed the exact same pose he had struck what felt like so long ago during that first night, when he had made the decision to abandon Avat’s Forest. It had been a good decision, but how much did it matter?

Well, a lot of people were alive right this very moment who would otherwise be dead if he’d chosen to stay.

Perhaps it mattered more than his abused, exhausted mind thought.

Someone was approaching him. He tossed a glance back and saw Keeza as she hopped lightly up onto the boulder.

For a moment, they simply stood together, surveying the woodlands.

It had been difficult for Keeza, but less so than he’d assumed. She had assimilated well to a life lived alongside him and the others of the Dektyr Tribe. In truth, she was a part of the tribe in all but name. He’d offered to give her the ceremony six days ago, but it was clear she still wasn’t quite ready for it, so he dropped it.

She was clearly very ready to continue joining him in his cave every night, though.

Jak had the impression that if it wouldn’t be seen as improper, she would join his bond if he asked her to. She seemed very enamored of him, and not just when they were on the bedding. She rarely left his side.

For a while he had taken it as anxiety that she would never admit to, and in the beginning, he figured that was true. She was among new people, and she came from a place where trust was a cruel joke, and often fatal. He was the only one she truly trusted, and so he was the one she stuck close to. But that was no longer the case.

She had not said it, but Jak suspected that Keeza loved him.

He had not said it...but he knew that he loved her as he loved the other women in his cave.

She was not ready for this, though, and given the nature of the situation they found themselves in, he was content to let it wait.

But she was also having some difficulty adjusting to life among so many people. She often explained that she was used to being alone, going off on her own for days at a time, and her emotional turmoil had always been endured in isolation. He thought that perhaps it would help to have someone there who loved her, but it only seemed to frustrate her.

She saw emotional turmoil as a weakness and she hated to be weak in front of him.

And Nessa.

Nessa...had not been helping things. It was also clear that his karn bond-mate was not handling everything all that well either. Nowadays, it was often just the three of them in their cave. Niri and Rylee had moved, Zora all but lived with them as well now, Azure now had her own cave she was recovering in, and Dawn was now sleeping away the cold months with all the rest of her dryad sisters in a secure, hidden location in Ara Forest.

Consequently, normally calming voices and relaxed personalities were gone, leaving only him, Nessa, and Keeza.

They had been fighting a lot, thankfully not physically, but Jak had to break up at least one fight a day, sometimes two or three. Keeza more or less admitted that her nerves were frayed, but he could tell Nessa was taking his interest in her more personally.

And it really didn’t help that when Keeza was feeling particularly petty she played that up.

Then, when Jak had to remind her that Nessa was his bond-mate but she was not, they started fighting. He hated it. He didn’t want to make anyone feel bad, but he also had to let Keeza know that his love of her did not invalidate or override his love of Nessa, and that while he was not playing favorites...Nessa was indeed his bond-mate, mated to him through a ritual of trust and love they both had openly committed to.

Mostly they were reasonable, but the situation was definitely wearing them all down.

“I see none,” Keeza murmured.

“Neither do I...how are you doing?” he asked.

“I did not start a fight with Nessa, if that is what you mean,” she replied, a little curtly.

“That isn’t what I meant, Keeza,” Jak said gently.

Keeza wasn’t looking at him, her face set in stone as she continued surveying the forest.

“Keeza,” he said gently.

Finally, slowly, she looked at him. “What?”

“I know this has been hard for you, and I know I’ve been asking a lot, and I want you to know that you have done a fantastic job so far.”

She looked away again, angry. “I am not a child who needs to be coddled,” she snapped.

“Keeza,” he said, more sternly this time. She looked at him again, reluctantly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Because something did seem to be wrong. She was harsher, sterner today. He thought it might be the extra strain they were all feeling due to the sudden lack of corrupted, but maybe it was something else.

Her expression remained stony, then finally softened. “I am scared,” she whispered, her voice so quiet her words were nearly lost to the wind. “I’m scared of losing this. You. Nessa. Zora and the others. The tribe. My...home. I spent my entire life never really feeling safe, but I feel safe here with you and your people. And now…”

“You won’t lose us, Keeza,” he said.

“You can’t know that,” she murmured, but didn’t resist when he took her hand.

“You’re right, I can’t. But I can believe it. I can believe in us, and I do. We’ll make this work. We will defeat our enemies, stop the corruption, and bring this island back to life. And then we will live our lives in glorious peace.”

“I really hope so,” she muttered, then she gave her head a shake. “I apologize. I know I’ve been difficult.”

“It’s all right, Keeza. It’s been very difficult for all of us.” He brought her hand up and kissed the back of it. “Just...stop provoking Nessa, please?”

She sighed. “I’m trying, but I’ll try harder. She...is struggling, too. There’s just something about her that provokes me. Usually in a good way, but when I’m stressed out…”

“I understand, and I appreciate your effort. Now, we should continue with our journey,” he said, letting go of her hand. “I don’t see any of them and we should take advantage of that.”

“What will we do?” she asked.

“Split up into groups, head into the forest, get the supplies,” he replied.

“I’m ready.”

Jak took one more look around, then hopped down off the boulder with Keeza to go and organize his warparty.

Minor Update

TL;DR: Raw VIII is coming out as intended, Our Own Way is delayed for an unknown amount of time, I need to instead write and publish a new book to test how hard Amazon is going to fuck me.

So…

I figured that I should probably say SOMETHING about the whole thing happening with Amazon right now. In truth, I’ve been considering what to say for a long time now. Normally I have a policy of being very open about my work with my readers, but behind the scenes, pretty much every author has been advising every other author to shut the fuck up about this. For a number of reasons.

I’ll say what I can.

Earlier this month, Amazon added some updates to the publishing process and one of those was a mandatory YES/NO question on ‘does the title contain adult content?’. Obviously, this is a fucking ridiculously vague and broad question, and really, it wouldn’t even be a problem except that apparently answering YES cuts your visibility. Which, in turn, cuts your profits.

So far, not a whole lot has actually happened.

There’s a lot of authors that seem to want to just keep going as they have been, but I’m extremely reluctant to do this.

My plans, unfortunately, have changed as a result of this.

For the immediate future, I will write and release Raw VIII, ideally sometime in July, thus wrapping up the Raw series. I will also continue working on Our Own Way 1 until it is completed. However, I am now forced to hold back on the release. Something I really don’t want to do, but the situation is far too unknown right now for a major release. And I was planning on Our Own Way being a major release. And if you fuck up a title’s launch, that’s it, you can’t ever take it back. Fucking up a Book One’s launch isn’t just fucking up that book’s launch, it is permanently fucking up the entire series, because series don’t really pick up in haremlit. For the most part, you can’t really have a shitty launch for a Book One and then pick up the slack with Book Two, it just doesn’t work that way.

This means that my new plan is to write a brand new novel as a sort of test novel. I need to see precisely how much damage answering YES does to a book.

The novel in question will be the first in a trilogy. It is post-apocalyptic and will take place in an underground society. It’ll be sort of along the lines of Monster Girl Inn in terms of balance with making a home life and going out to do action-adventure stuff, just grimmer.

I will hopefully have something further to say on the 1st.

Wish me luck.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (June 2023)

This will be a light Newsletter. I’m afraid I don’t have a whole lot for you.

Here’s what happened in May

That’s it, unfortunately.

I decided that I was going to take some time after I finished up Raw VII, but then some other things ended up happening (and they’re still happening at present) that has been drawing my attention. Like most things that intrude on my life, it’s nothing serious, just annoying.

The good news is that I’ve made progress on Our Own Way. In fact, I’m finally ready to talk about it. If you missed it, here’s a blog post going into an explanation of Our Own Way - The Rewrite. The really good news is that I’ve made a lot of progress during May. At present, I’d say I’m roughly 3/4 finished with the first novel. I also have the cover art ready to go. I’m going to be continuing to make persistent progress on the novel throughout June until I finish it, and then press on with the sequel as well.

I had hoped to have started Raw VIII by now, but that hasn’t happened. I at least have a plan of how I want the novel, and thus the series, to end. Yes, for those that don’t know, I have decided that Raw VIII will be the final Raw novel. I’m intending to have it out sometime in early to mid July, and then a bit after that I’ll release the third collection and then, sometime later in the year, possibly even in early 2024, I’ll release the Complete Collection.

Once Raw is finished off, I’ll be turning my full attention to Our Own Way. It sounds crazy, but I’d like to have it written and finished by the end of this year. Truly, though, it depends on how it does. I’ve got a clear idea of the overarching narrative, but my approach to the rewrite has been a lot more flexible than my other narratives. A harsh reality that I have to live with is that, unfortunately, I do have to obey the whims of the readership. If a series isn’t doing well, I won’t ditch it, but I will have to shorten it and wrap it up as soon as I can, because writing for a dying series is a losing proposition. I’m really, really, REALLY hoping that Our Own Way hits big, because it has the potential to be long and fun.

That’s all I really have to say. Raw VIII and final Raw Collection, then Our Own Way will go up for pre-order at some point, ideally in July.

Final thing is audiobooks are still being worked on, but from what I understand, things got rather busy over at RGP. Honestly I figured the flow of audiobooks had to slow down at some point given how rapidly they were coming out.

Let's Talk About Our Own Way

The time has finally come. It’s time to talk about Our Own Way.

For those of you who do not know what it is, Our Own Way is, at present, a finished haremlit series of 7 novellas about regular people living in a regular city doing regular things. It is 100% real life in the sense that there are no fantasy elements. No paranormal elements, no sci-fi elements, no nothing. Just real life in modern day 2020s America.

I wrote it on a whim July 2021 and wrapped it up in March 2022.

It was about a struggling writer named Gabe hooking up with a more mature, somewhat older woman named Ellen after her life falls apart and she discovers that their brief yet deep friendship from a few years back has resulted in him being the only person she can really trust. As they start falling in love, they decide that society is bullshit and that the only way they’re really going to be happy is to be free of bullshit jobs doling out bullshit wages and go their own way.

It was a really strange project, and a really fun one.

For those who are curious, you can, at present, get all seven episodes for free, today and tomorrow, and the Complete Collection is 99 cents.

I will be taking down this series June 15th.

Looking back on it, I realized that I had something with a lot more potential on my hands. When I first started writing it, I didn’t really think people would be all that interested in it. Consequently, I wrote the story in a serialized format averaging around 20-25,000 words apiece and initially gave it my original pink silhouette cover art, given I can make those myself and fairly easily nowadays. But it started to get some attention, and though it didn’t earn anywhere near as much as my other works, the people who did read it reacted very strongly.

There was an intense sentiment of ‘I didn’t know I needed this’. For a reason that I can guess at, the story really struck a chord with a lot of people.

Once I realized people were actually invested, I began trying to make the works longer and invested in some better, though still simple, cover art. Which is the art it has presently. Near the end, I was getting bogged down with finishing up A Warm Place, continuing Raw, and preparing for Monster Girl Inn. So I wrapped it up a bit quickly and then set it aside, not thinking much more of it.

But then it came back.

I kept getting ideas, and then even more ideas. I realized at some point that I could’ve made entire novels out of the story. And I also realized that a huge portion of the haremlit readership probably missed out on it because of the triple threat I saddled the series with: giving it…untraditional cover art, making it novella-length, and, the big one, putting it in the erotica category. (I now realize that this is basically a death sentence for the majority of all fiction on Amazon.) I also realized that people were still really liking it, and it was being recommended for people looking for a pure slice-of-life experience. Which led me to realizing that could actually be a thing.

I’ve had at least a few authors tell me that my writing of Our Own Way was, if not an opening of the door and paving of the way for haremlit slice-of-life, it at least was a significant step in that direction.

So, eventually, I began realizing I could do for it what I had done for A Warm Place, which was also initially a collection of serialized novellas with a weird concept, and rewrite it as novels.

Since that realization, I’ve been piecing it together, planning it out, and getting some real writing done. As of right now, I’m somewhere over a third finished with the actual writing. I have what I consider to be fucking awesome cover art and I’ve got a decent grasp of the overall story, the characters, where it starts and where it ends, and the many, many things that are going to happen between those two events.

For those of you interested, I’ve posted the first two chapters of the new version right here on my site. The third chapter is here, on my Patreon, if you are a 1$/month Patron. The rest of the chapters will start posting on my Patreon tomorrow for 3$/month Patrons.

I am hoping that sometime in July I will have it ready, and then I intend to put it up for pre-order, since everyone tells me I really need to try that.

It will probably be among the longest books I’ve ever written. A Warm Place 1 came in at 92,000 words and Demoness IV, my longest ever, came in at 102,000 words. I’m hoping to make it my longest book ever, but we’ll see how that turns out. I don’t like to pad my stories unnecessarily just to reach an arbitrary word or page count.

Now I’ve got to get back to work on the book and start planning the final Raw novel and then write them both simultaneously.

Our Own Way (Rewrite) Preview

Here are the first two chapters from my rewrite of Our Own Way!

You can read the third chapter on my Patreon if you are a 1$/month Patron, and you can read the following chapters as I post them in Early Access if you are a 3$/month Patron.

CHAPTER ONE

Freedom did not feel like it was supposed to.

As he drove down the rain-slicked streets of his city, beneath a fading October sunset and slate gray skies, Gabe Harris reflected on what exactly it was ‘supposed’ to feel like.

Words came to him.

Liberation.

Exaltation.

He would have settled for joy.

Up ahead, the light turned red and he rolled to a stop at a vacant intersection. He glanced at the clock mounted in his dash and saw that it wasn’t even six in the afternoon yet. Looking up through the saturated windshield, he could see that there was perhaps half an hour of daylight left.

And then the city would be shrouded in darkness.

Maybe it was just the gloomy atmosphere sapping him of his serenity.

The light turned green.

He resumed driving, looking forward to ending this process of moving all his crap from one location to another. If nothing else, the day had been taxing and he just wanted to lock himself behind a door and turn his brain off.

That was possible now.

That gave him a flicker of excitement, and something like hope.

Yes, he could go to his new apartment, walk inside, close and lock the door, and no one could come in if he didn’t want them to.

Well, that wasn’t completely true, but on a social level, he could tell everyone to screw off and they’d have to abide by it.

And he was in a mood to after the past…

Gabe tried looking for a suitable stopping point in his past.

The past six months? No, longer.

The past year? Certainly longer than that.

Decade would have to do.

“Damn,” he muttered as he almost missed the turn into his new parking lot.

Pulling in, he found a spot as close to his new apartment as possible and parked. Killing the engine, he popped the trunk and got out.

The rain had stopped.

Though the distant thunder that still rumbled occasionally meant more was coming. For a moment, Gabe looked up at the intense clouds that defined the sky above him. It wouldn’t have been out of place in some dramatic painting. He knew his predilection for storms meant that the far off thunder was more promise than threat.

As he began gathering the last of his things from the trunk, (just two boxes that, despite every effort simply would not fit during the previous trip back from his old place), Gabe was forced to admit that while freedom may not feel like how he had hoped, it did feel like something.

And that something felt a hell of a lot better than the past several years.

Balancing the boxes against his leg while resting it on the bumper, he slammed the trunk shut, then gripped them and headed towards his new apartment building.

Shouldering his way through the door and into the dimly lit interior, he was glad to find the stairwell and, as far as he could tell, hallways above and below, vacant. As a broke twenty-something attempting to do something probably really stupid with his life, he’d been forced to live in a not great part of town and already had been stared down by a few guys.

Heading downstairs, Gabe got into his basement apartment and, setting the boxes on the floor, he shut and locked the door against the world.

Finally. Alone.

He was alone.

For a long moment, he simply stood there and looked around the apartment. He had always been forced to live with at least one other person until this very moment. His family, his ‘friends’, coworkers, random roommates.

But here? Here was isolation.

And as an introvert living a life of forced interaction day in, day out, isolation was a gift.

Or was it?

Gabe sighed softly as he picked the boxes back up and moved them deeper into the studio apartment, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, he would leave it until tomorrow. Moving around the TV stand that was the only thing serving as a wall between the ‘living room’ and the ‘bedroom’ of his squalid home, he set the boxes on the dresser and started unpacking.

There wasn’t a whole lot there.

Books, mostly.

A small lamp.

A few games that hadn’t made it over during the previous trip.

Some clothes.

Most significant was his sound system. He set that up with great care. It might be little more than a docking port for an MP3 player and a pair of speakers, but when he’d finally bought it a year ago it had become invaluable to the preservation of his sanity.

Getting it plugged in behind the dresser, Gabe set it up, selected the first lo-fi playlist available, and let it play.

He actually felt himself relax, his entire body, as the music began.

After he finished unpacking the boxes and putting everything away, he broke them down and pushed them into the trashcan, then walked over and collapsed onto his sofa. It was more of a loveseat than a sofa, really.

He found himself making little mental amendments like that in his life all the time, almost as if he himself should come with an asterisk.

He had a car, but it was a shitty hatchback with little room.

He had a laptop, but it was eight years old.

He had a bank account, but it was in the red.

He had a phone, but…

Gabe pulled his phone out of his pocket and started at the glossy black rectangle bitterly.

But it had cost him goddamned six hundred dollars.

He was still regretting that one, even though he knew it was unreasonable. He was so sick and tired of having a crap phone, having crap everything, but when his phone had broke it was either get another crap one or actually upgrade.

And he’d finally had a little bit of money, so…

But the money was already gone. All gone now, in such a ridiculous gamble.

His mind swirled as he sat there on his loveseat, staring at his phone. Well, really staring at his reflection in it. Unhappy with that particular sight, he activated the screen. He laughed softly as he saw the date.

October 19th, 2023.

Today was supposed to be the first day in the next chapter of his life. The day he turned over a new leaf. The day he buckled down, got his shit together, and stopped being such a failure. The day it all changed.

It was a Thursday.

Somehow, it didn’t feel right. Who the hell revolutionized their life on a Thursday? In October, no less?

With a sigh, he unlocked the screen and called up the contacts, then stopped.

Why was he checking out his contacts?

Gabe looked around his apartment. It felt barren, and not just because he was poor and didn’t have a lot of furniture or stuff, nor that even if he wasn’t, he preferred a more minimalist style of living. It was another thing entirely.

He was lonely.

Isolation was a gift, but he was lonely.

He’d lived with people for his entire life, but he had often been alone.

With a weary sigh he began scanning the list. There were just about three dozen names there. For some reason his parents were still in there, and his brother. His last several roommates. A scattering of coworkers from the past several jobs he’d had.

Every name he looked at gave him a bad feeling in his stomach.

He wouldn’t call Jeremy, the guy had stolen from him.

He refused to call Peter, the guy was a psycho who couldn’t go out in public without starting a fight.

He definitely wasn’t looking to hang out with Lisa, not after that absolutely miserable single date they’d gone on.

God, what did he even still have Nick’s number!?

Gabe went through the list twice before realizing that there wasn’t even a single person he wanted to see. Was he that much of an antisocial introvert? It was possible, but as he began running through the list a third time, growing almost desperate in his bid for some kind of human contact, he kept coming up with memories, bad ones.

Memories of things he had decided he would no longer tolerate.

Abruptly, the screen cleared to show an incoming call from an unknown number.

For a moment, he stared at it, almost automatically deactivating the screen, because scam calls were out of control now, no matter how many times he blocked them. And declining the call told them there was a human being on the other end, so he’d just taken to deactivating the screen to shut his phone up and let it go to voicemail.

They didn’t even bother with automated messages anymore, not that he was complaining.

Except this number didn’t come with a tag that said SCAM or POLITICAL CALL or MARKETING CALL.

It came with no tag, and now that he was thinking about it, he actually recognized the number. Not enough to know who it was, but to know that he had once had this number in his memory. But who in the name of God could it be that he’d actually gone to the trouble of deleting?

Curiosity, and the crushing burden of loneliness, forced his hand.

He answered the call.

“Hello?”

A long pause came that made him start to think it was indeed a scam call, it had just slipped the net. Only...no, he could hear breathing and the faint sounds of traffic on the other end.

“...Gabe?”

A woman’s voice. Familiar, dauntingly familiar, but for a moment he grappled helplessly with his memories, trying to put a name to the voice.

It was a coworker, a former coworker, it had to be. He was sure of it.

Someone he’d talked with many times, but the only woman he really remembered talking with frequently was–

“Ellen?”

“Yeah, it’s Ellen. Um. Hi...this is you, right?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yeah. Yes. Sorry. It’s Gabe. I, uh, almost didn’t recognize your number.” He waited and another uncomfortable pause went by. He had the sense that something was wrong, he could hear it in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” she murmured. Then, more resolutely: “No, I’m not okay.”

He felt a stab of icy panic grip him. “Are you hurt? Or is someone after you?”

“No, nothing like that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m, um, I’m safe. I’m not hurt. Just...I’m in a bad spot.” She paused again.

It sounded so alien, hearing her like this, especially when he became convinced that she had been crying. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he felt confident this was the truth.

Something in her tone.

“Can I help?” he asked finally.

She’d obviously called him for a reason.

“Yes.” Another uncomfortable hesitation. “Can I come to your place? I need a place to go. I need someone to talk to.”

“You can come over,” he replied.

“Thank you. I still remember where your place is, I shouldn’t be too far away.”

“I’ve just moved, actually. Well, I’ve moved like three times since the last time we spoke, but I’ve just moved again–let me text you my address.”

“That’d be great. Also...thanks.”

“Not a problem,” he replied.

“See you soon.”

“Yep.”

They said goodbye and he hung up and fired off a text with his address in it.

Half a minute later he got a response: Thanks again. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.

Gabe stared at the screen for a long moment, a strange sense of unreality settling over him like a smothering cloak.

Shit.

CHAPTER TWO

The biggest thing that allowed him to successfully clean his entire apartment in less than twenty minutes was that he was a little obsessive about some things, and had already organized and cleaned most of it by this point.

Gabe had, at some point, been hoping to have a girl over to his place. Now that he had a home that was his place, in that he didn’t have to share it with anyone else.

But definitely not so soon. Certainly not the actual first day.

As he worked, he thought of everything he knew about Ellen.

She was tall. She was beautiful. She was smart.

She was one of those women.

Most guys occasionally ran into a woman that left a deep impression, whether of romantic attraction or pure lust, sometimes both. Such a deep impression that they found themselves thinking of her even years later.

Ellen might actually be the woman in that regard.

Almost four years ago, they had gotten to know each other over the course of three months in what struck him as an extremely unlikely situation. For the most part, up until nine months ago, he’d spent the past few years working at a grocery store called Becky’s. Not long after he’d started working there back in late 2019, Ellen had taken on the job of accountant.

Due to luck, they both tended to work similar shifts and ended up sharing the break room more often than not. After a few awkward silences, Ellen had actually struck up a conversation with him and he’d found her easy to talk to.

What surprised him the most was that she found him easy to talk to.

They’d spoken dozens of times, had a lot of great and natural conversations that he remembered enjoying immensely.

And then, one day in December, she’d quit.

He had known it was coming. It had quickly become obvious that she was vastly overqualified for the position, and had taken it out of a sense of desperation after being let go from her previous accounting job.

She was clearly smart, sharp, and tenacious enough that he knew she wouldn’t be with them for that long.

Honestly, he was surprised it took as long as it had.

Why did she even have his number? He was thinking about that as he took a leak and then quickly washed his hands and face.

Oh right, his car had broken down and for a few weeks there she had occasionally given him rides to or from work as their schedule aligned, and it was easiest to coordinate via text. And now he remembered why he’d deleted her number.

Despite the fact that they’d actually got as far as finding each other on social media and talking more often than seemed likely, he felt there were too many differences between them to be real friends outside of work, and that he would never, in a million years, successfully ask her out.

To hold onto her number for that reason seemed futile.

And not just because she had been with someone else at the time.

She wasn’t just out of his league, she was out of his galaxy.

He might as well approach a movie star.

Gabe paused in drying his face as he thought he heard a car door shut somewhere nearby. He quickly finished up, then moved to the living room. Well, ‘living room’. It was all kind of the same in a studio apartment.

For just a moment, he wondered if he’d misheard, or if it was someone else.

Then he heard footsteps in the hallway outside and then a sharp knock on the door.

Stepping up to it, he looked through the peephole and saw a familiar knockout blonde waiting unhappily.

What could have happened to her?

He opened up the door and stepped back. “Hi.”

“Hello, Gabe,” she said, pausing briefly as she looked at him, a look of surprise passing over her face. “You look...different.”

“Do I?” he replied, looking down at himself reflexively.

“Uh, yeah. I mean, it’s a good different.”

She came in and he closed the door behind her. He found himself thinking something similar, though he didn’t voice it at all. She looked miserable, her eyes red and puffy, almost certainly from crying, her face very pale.

And she definitely had put on some weight, but certainly not in a bad way.

She really filled out her jeans even more…

Needed to focus. She was upset, a bad thing had happened to her, and she, for whatever reason, had decided to come to him for help.

And he was going to help her.

“I’m not sure what it is,” he replied. “I guess I stopped clean-shaving, so I don’t look so freaking young anymore. I think.”

“Yeah, that definitely is some of it,” she murmured, standing there staring at him. “You’ve lost some weight, and...I think it’s the t-shirt, too. I can’t remember ever seeing you not in a button-down and that fucking apron they made everyone wear. The shirt looks good on you.”

Was she hitting on him?

No, couldn’t be, she was just being nice.

“Thanks,” he murmured. “Uh...what happened?”

Whatever small smile had been building on her face collapsed and a look of anger mixed with abject misery swept across her beautiful, pale features.

“My life collapsed. Again,” she replied, walking over to his loveseat and sitting down heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting beside her.

“Yeah, so am I...fuck. Where do I even begin? My fiance–” she paused, grimaced, glanced down briefly at her bare left ring finger, “–ex-fiance, cheated on me.”

“Holy shit. I’m sorry, Ellen.”

“Yeah. Fucking fucker.” She reached up and pushed her long, pale blonde hair back, then suddenly heaved an irritated sigh. “Hold on,” she muttered, going into her purse and coming out with a hair-tie. Gathering up her hair, she put it into a ponytail.

“There,” she said. Ellen opened her mouth again, but no words came out. She looked at him suddenly. “Is this too weird?” she asked suddenly. “I know we haven’t actually spoken in, what...God, three, no Christ, four years now?”

“Just about, yeah,” he replied. “And no, it’s not too weird.”

“I’m sorry we stopped talking. I’m just...bad at social media, and things got really busy with my new job–”

“It’s really fine, Ellen.”

She seemed to relax after studying him briefly and apparently determining he wasn’t lying. “Thanks,” she said. “Uh...so yeah, I, shit, where do I start? Sorry, I’m a goddamned mess right now. Just–shit.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Take your time,” Gabe replied, finding himself thinking ‘how in the name of God could anyone cheat on her!?’.

“Thanks,” she said softly. Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few seconds, then exhaled slowly. “Okay. I began suspecting something was up like a month ago. I’ve been cheated on before, so this time around, the signs became more obvious. He was more distant, he wanted to go out on his own more often and was evasive about what was doing, where he’d been, who he’d seen. And I didn’t want to be that woman–the one who gets all paranoid and jealous and clingy–so I told myself I was just being paranoid…

“Only I wasn’t. Two weeks ago, after a lot of bullshit I finally successfully lobbied my workplace to let me go back to work-from-home. Which is a whole other thing I need rant about. I thought Blake would be happy, more time together, less time spent commuting to work, pissing away money on gas, all that shit. But he was annoyed, he was practically mad at me when I told him, but he wouldn’t really say why.”

She paused, frowning intensely, looking off to the side as her eyes unfocused briefly. Then she blinked a few times and returned her attention to him.

“I kept getting more paranoid and finally, well, he left his phone at the condo today. And I knew his code, I’d seen him punch it in a few times, and yes, I became that woman who goes through her fiance’s phone. But I was right, goddamnit. I was right he was seeing some fucking slut–I found all these sexts and nudes from this one girl. Some fucking college bitch–”

Ellen broke off again, hugging herself suddenly and leaning forward, clenching her teeth. “I found a video of them fucking in our fucking bed! I was so angry I vomited. Barely made it to the kitchen sink. I just–I grabbed some of my shit and threw it in my car and started driving. I didn’t even know where the hell I was going. Just...away. I had this plan, I figured he’d call me. He’d realize his phone wasn’t on him and come back home, see I wasn’t there, get paranoid, because he was getting paranoid, projecting, that cheating fuck!”

She clenched her hands into fists and a tremor of fury ran through her.

“Ellen, do you want a hug?” he asked suddenly.

He couldn’t stand to see her this miserable and felt severely ill-equipped to handle it, but he wasn’t going to just not try.

She looked at him, the surprise plain on her face, and then her expression resolved. “You know what? Yes, I do want a hug. Badly.”

She scooted closer to him on the loveseat and they embraced, hugging. Tightly, actually. She ended up squeezing him so hard it hurt, but he didn’t say anything.

Even when she suddenly started crying.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” she managed, tried to say something else, then let out another sob.

Gabe felt like he’d been tossed into a situation he had very little prep for or knowledge on how to handle. So he just went with it, doing what made sense, rubbing her back as she squeezed him and cried on his shoulder.

“It’ll be okay, Ellen,” he said, not even sure if that was true, but he knew, on some deep level, that it was the kind of thing she needed to hear in that moment. “You’ll be okay. I’m here for you.”

He kept rubbing her back, trying to ignore the fact that her breasts were pressed against his chest. This was about the absolute worst time to be having sexual thoughts, and he was glad to find that it was actually surprisingly easy to push those thoughts away.

She cried for another few moments, and then fell silent.

Finally, she sniffed heavily and released him, sitting back up. “Thank you,” she murmured, wiping at her eyes. “Ugh, God, I thought I was already cried out, now I’m all gross again. Um, can I use your bathroom?”

“Of course,” he said, pointing deeper into the apartment. “Last door in the row.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, standing.

She disappeared into the bathroom and he heard her blow her nose, then running water, and finally a moment later she reappeared, her face washed, leaving her looking a little more refreshed. She sat back down beside him.

“Uh...that was embarrassing,” she muttered. “I’m sorry. Shit. I’m realizing that I’m just showing up on your doorstep basically out of the blue after years of no contact, ranting and raving about my pathetic life, and now I’m crying all over you…”

“Ellen, it’s fine. I’m here to listen, to help if I can. I want to help you.”

She looked at him when he said that, he expression changing, like she was somehow appraising him. Finally, she just gave her head a small shake, like she was trying to dislodge a thought.

“I appreciate it,” she said. “I guess I should finish my story. I was driving around, trying to cool off, failing, crying. He called, and this calm came over me. I was going to play it cool, try to get him to maybe admit to it, but as soon as I heard his voice–it was like seeing red. I lost it, screaming at him. He tried to deny it, briefly, but it was pretty obvious he was fucked. He was found out. Tried to defend himself, told me it was my fault, pulling out all the stops. I sucked in bed, I’m getting fat, I’m awful at giving head, just everything he could think of.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, that’s awful,” Gabe said.

“Yeah. I told him to fuck off, it’s over, hung up, drove around for a while longer and then just...cried my fucking eyes out. And then, eventually, I was cried out, or so I thought, and I started thinking of people I could call on, places I could go, because I had to go somewhere.”

“And you chose...me?” he asked.

“Yeah. I did,” she murmured. She began to say something else, but her stomach growled. Rather loudly. “God, I’m fucking starving. I had breakfast, and then...I vomited. And then I haven’t eaten anything since then.”

Gabe stood up. “I’ll put something...aw dammit.”

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t have any food.”

“Wait, like, literally no food?” she asked.

“Basically. I just moved in.”

She looked around. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, wow. Now I feel bad for just showing up while you’re in the middle of getting settled.”

“Don’t feel bad,” he replied.

Her stomach growled again. “How about I order a big, giant pizza, and wings, and soda, and we enjoy that for dinner? Because I could use that after today. And I’ll pay.”

He hesitated, but only briefly. What choice did he have? There was really no food here, and he was negative in the bank. “I accept.”

She laughed. “Okay then.”

Ellen pulled out her phone.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (May 2023)

 
 

MAY 7TH

Things that got released in April:

A little bit of expansion on the ebook releases.

  • I wrote a 3,400 word bonus short for Raw I - III Collected, set in between Raw II & III. It’s basically fluff with Jak, Niri, and Rylee.

  • I wrote a 4,000 word bonus short for the new Raw Collection that takes place between Raw IV & V. It’s fluff with Jak & Nessa.

  • I wrote a single new short for the Paranormal Universe re-release. It’s about 8,200 words and it takes place after what was previously the end of Parasexual.

Now, here is what’s happening for May.

  • RAW VII: I had hoped to get this out before now, but I ran into some problems. Some real life problems kind of hit me out of nowhere. I’m all right, but it definitely threw me off track. I’m intending to have this out by, at the latest, May 7th, but I’m aiming for May 5th.

  • MONSTER GIRL INN BONUS SHORTS: I’ve written two of four of the bonus shorts I’ve thought up, and I’m making progress into the third. I’m hoping to also get this done and the collection updated this week.

  • HAVEN 7 AUDIO (Amazon | Audible): Coming May 7th.

  • SCI-FI SHARED UNIVERSE VOL. 02: I’m really intending to get this one done and out this month. Given I was really derailed last month, I didn’t get any real work done on it. But I’m still wanting to get it out with a new bonus short follow-up for Like A Sex Toy and a novelette epilogue for Like A Fine Wine.

That’s what I’ve got coming out in May. Now, to wrap it up, I’ll give some updates on things that are farther out.

  • RAW: I’ve been planning out the rest of the Raw series more in depth recently, and it’s occurred to me that we all might be better served by a large Raw VIII instead of a small Raw VIII & IX. I’ll need more time to decide for sure, I intend to just rest and let everything settle again for a bit once I finish up Raw VII, but we very well might see the end of the Raw series with a larger Raw VIII. In truth, I am a little eager to move on to Our Own Way, and I’m reluctant to leave Raw undone before fully turning my attention to that. I did something similar with A Warm Place and consequently A Warm Place 9 was fucking hell to write.

  • OUR OWN WAY: This ended up kind of derailed by all the other smaller projects that popped up and I’m looking forward to getting back to work on this. I’m extremely reluctant to put any kind of release date on it, but I think late July might not be impossible. I’m also going to be experimenting with pre-order for the first time ever with this. Super looking forward to it, I’ve gotten to the first sex scene between Gabe and Ellen and I have to say, I feel like it might be up there in terms of ‘best sex scenes I’ve written in my whole career’. Maybe I’m delusion, but it felt great and I’m looking forward to fleshing out their relationship even more.

  • COUGAR HAREM: Not much to say here. It’s still orbiting around my mind, but it’s gotta be put on hold. I’m thinking, given how close it is in tone to Our Own Way, I will likely push this back in the queue and work on my horror harem first.

  • HORROR HAREM: I still really fucking want to write this. More than ever, just recently. I’m not very far into it, but once everything gets settled and Raw is wrapped up, I’m going to try and make some real leaps and bounds progress on it. As I’ve said before, I’ve got the cover ready to go and I’m really looking forward to writing it and getting it out there. I want to know what people think of it.

  • BACKLOG: So I’ve decided that I’m going to do a rewrite of The Pale Redhead. Because of that, I do not have enough to constitute a Collection for my Post-Apocalyptic Shared Universe. So Sex & Survival is going to remain as a free download from this site and also for sale on Smashwords and other platforms. I’ll put the A New World novella that was previously a part of Misty Vixen Starter Pack up at some point, although I’m curious if anyone would even notice it was gone.

That’s about it. I’m going to take it a little easy this month. I’m trying to make some adjustments in my real life and although I feel like my mental health is a LOT more stable this year, it’s proven that it can sneak up on me and wreck my week if I’m not careful. So that’s about it. I’ll have a decision on the final Raw novels this time next month.

Raw VII Preview

Making good progress on Raw VII! Here’s the first chapter.

You can read the second chapter here, if you are a 1$/month Patron.

The rest of the chapters will start posting starting tomorrow, twice a day, until completion, if you are a 3$/month Patron.

It was in that moment Jak realized he had never experienced real terror.

He’d faced down horrifyingly lethal monsters and an army of karn and certain death from a dozen different ways, but the only thing that had even come close to touching how he felt right now was during his first few days, when he heard Niri scream his name in fear, calling for help.

Everything hurt. His head, his body, his limbs, everything ached and the sick feeling was lingering, but none of that mattered right now.

“Move!” Jak yelled as he raced forward towards his village.

It sounded like madness up ahead.

More screaming, more crying, more horror.

The others hurried to keep up, following in his wake through the dead forest and the snowfall.

Jak wasn’t sure at what point he transitioned over into his heightened state, but he knew that he arrived at his village in it and took everything in with an awful clarity.

It was like stepping into a nightmare.

There was blood in the air, the fresh-spilled blood of his tribemates, and something was burning that wasn’t a cooking fire. One of the nearest huts had collapsed into a heap of raw materials. People ran screaming from the…

Corrupted. He realized at once that he was seeing a corrupted being, but not like the others. This was a corruption of the magical kind, what was clearly an instant process. He felt terror rip at him once more as he felt a fresh wave of pain roll through his body.

Was the corruption now inside of him?

His bond-mates?

Jak shook that off. Right now, it didn’t matter, he couldn’t do anything about it. But he could do something about this situation in front of him, even if it was going to be brutally painful. He had somewhere to be, something to do, and several someones to save.

Energy burning within him, Jak drew and threw two knives in rapid succession, his movements smooth and fluid. Each one buried itself in the eye of a recently corrupted tribemate who were both in the process of attacking their non-corrupted brethren.

There was chaos in the village, over a dozen different small skirmishes having broken out. Jak drew his adze and moved.

He moved like a beast made for the hunt in its absolute purest form.

Everything else was slow around him, and it was easy, so worryingly easy, to run up and bring his blade down or around in a tight arc, removing tribemate after tribemate from life with a spray of blood. And that only made it worse as he did it.

Knowing he had to do this, that there was no obvious way to bring them back, knowing they would kill and kill and kill if he didn’t kill them, didn’t help ease the agony.

His adze tore into a man’s neck, a hunter who had joined fairly recently. His name was Ket. His eyes were full of black light and his face was smeared with blood. He went down to join the dead in the dirt and Jak moved on.

He pushed himself faster and harder, knowing that every instant he had not completed this task was another instant that someone could, and likely would, die. And he moved ever forward through the huts towards his cave, hunting desperately for his lovers.

Every person he came to, every face he saw, he feared the worst.

But finally, as he saved another tribemate from a pair of corrupted closing in on her, Jak hurried out between two huts that would finally put him in view of his own cave, and there he saw Rylee. She was healing someone and Niri was standing over her, a bone blade in each hand, looking pained but fierce.

“Jak!” she cried.

The relief he felt was immense. They were still alive, still fighting.

His relief didn’t last long as he heard a shout come from behind him. Turning back around, he saw that the fire from earlier had grown.

“Jak, what is happening!?” Niri yelled.

“I don’t know!” he called back. “Keep guarding Rylee!”

“All right!”

She’d hardly gotten her response out before he was off and running again, his ability still burning so brightly in him, forcing him to action. He dodged in among the huts, his absolute need to help his tribemates burning as furious in his head as the power that thundered within him. Jak dodged between two huts and saw a small group of people had coalesced near the fire, trying to handle the situation.

Some were helping the wounded, some were trying to put out the fire, some were standing guard against further corrupted.

There weren’t enough.

“Get the wounded to my cave!” he snapped, appearing beside them. “Sena!” he yelled, staring at the fire. “Here! Now!”

Jak had no idea if she was here, he only knew that he had no obvious way to deal with the fire. It had spread to three huts now and looked to be getting worse. He sensed movement to his left and saw Sena running towards him through the falling snow.

“Can you deal with the fire?” he asked.

“I...I think so,” she replied, studying it uncertainly.

“Try! I have to–”

He reacted on pure instinct, barely registering the sound of heavy paws beating the ground in rapid approach. Twisting to his right, he saw a wolf, eyes full of darkness, frothing at the mouth, coming right towards him.

It leaped into the air, jaws open wide.

Jak snapped forward, driving his fist into the corrupted wolf’s mouth without thinking about it. His fist parted the top of the wolf’s head from the rest of it, sending it flying through the air. He jerked forward in the next instant, hitting the wolf’s corpse with his shoulder and deflecting it away from Sena.

It hit the ground and rolled a few times, twitching occasionally as blood burst out of its ruined head.

More were coming out of the forest, dark, low shapes advancing on him through the snowfall.

“Deal with the fire!” he snapped, and ran forward.

This was getting worse faster than he could deal with it.

No. He could handle it.

He’d handled worse.

Probably.

Jak moved, settling into the flow of combat as four wolves advanced on him with a sinister grace absent from the other corrupted. What were the rules with these? Were they the same? Were they even corrupted?

It didn’t matter. They were a threat.

They needed to end.

He hurled his short spear in a single motion, didn’t even watch it punch through the skull of the nearest wolf, simply knew that it would in the heat of the moment. He was already drawing another thin bone knife and throwing it overhand at the eye of the next wolf. It collapsed, twitching violently, as Jak fell upon the others with his adze.

They were dead in a matter of a few short, hard chops.

But even as the blood was landing around him, darkening the snow that had fallen and gathered, he saw more wolves emerging from the treeline. And there were other creatures behind them. He saw a giant spider, a few uncertain human or elven shapes, and at least two blade-toothed tigers. All of them with glowing dark eyes.

Something was wrong.

They were moving with too much purpose, too coordinated.

“Jak! I can’t stop the fire!” Sena yelled.

He glanced back briefly over his shoulder and saw the fire was spreading further, despite Sena’s efforts. Several of his tribemates were backing away from the flames, looking around anxiously. It was falling apart like dry earth in his grasp.

Something whirled through the air out of the village to his left, sailed past him, and wrapped around the legs of a wolf, tripping it up. Almost at the same moment, a spear came flying through the falling snow and punched through the skull of one of the blade-toothed tigers.

Nessa, Keeza, and Zora appeared, jogging forward to join him.

“Nessa! Zora! I need you to get with Rylee and Niri and get everyone out of here!” he said. Then he raised his voice, calling to the village. “Take the wounded and get to the North Outpost as fast as you can!”

“I’m not leaving you here!” Nessa snapped immediately.

“Nessa, I need you to do this.” He tossed a quick, impatient glance at the corrupted creatures encroaching on them. They were getting closer. “I’ll stay here and hold them off. It has to be you leading them, Nessa, you’re the greatest warrior in the tribe after me.”

She stared at him, her chest and face splashed with blood from the fighting and sprinkled with ash from the growing fire.

“You had better be there, fast,” she said finally.

“I will, please make sure you get everyone out. Check the caves!”

“I’m on it, come on, Zora.”

The two women immediately began passing out instructions to those in the nearby area, organizing them with the speed that came from a well-managed village and competent leadership. Nessa fell quickly into her element, pointing and snapping out orders.

Their tribemates moved hastily to follow, grateful for a clear goal.

He didn’t know if the North Outpost was safe, but it was the second safest location, and it was farther from the Barrens.

Of course, he realized, in a sudden wave of fresh horror, that he had no idea how far this...spell? Whatever it was, how far it had reached.

“What about me?” Keeza asked, stepping up to his side.

“You owe us nothing,” Jak replied, eyeing the corrupted.

He hurled another bone knife and dropped one of the corrupted humans, someone he tried not to recognize in that moment.

“Oh yes, let me just go back to my cave in all this!” Keeza snapped.

She picked up a nearby spear and threw it with amazing accuracy, punching it right through the skull of another corrupted man.

“If you’re willing to help, then I’ll take it. Help me kill them! Buy my people time!”

And then he was off, a club in one hand, the adze in the other.

More corrupted were spilling from the forest.

How many were there?!

He ignored the question as soon as he posed it, knowing that it didn’t really matter. He would fight on for as long as he had to.

And he did, moving among the corrupted with a weapon in each hand, striking with blows and attacks that killed in an instant. Even freshly made corrupted couldn’t stand against him, at least not one on one.

Time passed, blood flowed, the village burned.

Jak’s own body was burning up already from using his ability so soon after the last time. He knew the only reason he wasn’t suffering a lot more was because he’d managed to get at least some rest in between then and now.

This couldn’t go on forever, though.

He felt his hope returning to him, though, as he saw his people moving with purpose. And Keeza. She was a warrior in her own right, and as he watched her tear through half a dozen new corrupted wolves, he suddenly wondered about his assessment of Nessa being second only to him.

Well, that was a thought he’d keep firmly to himself.

He kept going, arms swinging back and forth, delivering devastating blows with the hardened club and lethal chops with the adze, cleaving through flesh and bone like water. He put his great strength and speed to use, and Keeza did hers, and they killed and slaughtered and murdered.

And still the corrupted came out of the forest.

Enough time had to have passed. He no longer heard the voices of the others. He no longer heard anything but the roar of the fire and the awful sounds of the ever-advancing corrupted.

“Keeza!” he shouted, yanking his adze free of another skull. “We have to go! Follow me!”

“Go!” she replied, disengaging and running towards him.

He turned and ran into the burning village, moving clear of the fire that had taken over half a dozen huts now, and tried not to feel the rage and horror that was building steadily in him. The rage and horror that grew worse with each body he stepped over.

This was their home. They’d spent over a season building it, living in it, making it theirs.

And now they were forced out by impossible circumstances.

They got around the burning huts and came to the cave entrances.

Jak pointed to a section of the rock between the two entrances. “Climb!”

“What are you doing?” Keeza replied.

“I need to make sure everyone got out!”

“Jak, let me help you,” she said after an instant’s hesitation.

“No, just get out of here and get to the North Outpost,” he replied. “I know you know where it is.”

She sighed. “I’ll climb, but I’m waiting for you up there.”

“Fine. Go. Hurry,” he replied.

Jak hurried first into his own cave, still burning through that energy. He couldn’t drop out of his heightened state until he was clear of the village and somewhere relatively safe. Having Keeza around would help with that. She could watch out for him while he got his bearings back.

He looked around his cave and found that no one remained. He took a moment to snatch up a new batch of throwing knives, a trio of short spears, and a fresh waterskin. Looking around, he could see that the women had already grabbed whatever important things they could.

His eyes caught on Niri’s nearest painting.

He felt his whole body shudder with rage but pushed it away yet again. No time, never any time to feel, only to do.

He raced back outside and into the communal cave. Running all the way to the back of the tunnel, he checked the spaces where people might be hiding. Nothing in the back chambers, but he could see a lot of packed away food and supplies. He hoped it survived the fires, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

Running back into the central sleeping area, he looked around and his heart skipped a beat as he saw a lone figure laying near the center of the room. He hurried over, already seeing that they were still breathing, and dropped into a crouch.

“Ezzi…” he muttered, seeing she’d taken a blow to the head.

She’d probably wandered in here during the fighting, fleeing or maybe trying to grab something important, and passed out from the wound.

Scooping the slim elf up, he hurried back outside.

The corrupted were among the village now, and...they were keeping their distance from the flames. They were definitely smarter, a lot smarter.

And they looked right at him as he emerged, roared, and began coming for him.

A rock fell from above, hitting the nearest creature, another wolf, cracking its skull.

“Jak! Come on!” Keeza snapped.

It wasn’t easy, but he managed to clamber up the rock face one-armed. The other arm held Ezzi securely, slung over one shoulder.

Keeza took her as he neared the top.

“Come on,” Jak said, “we have to get somewhere safe and rest a moment.”

“Fine,” Keeza replied, “lead the way.”

They hurried off into the frigid darkness, snow still falling in huge, silent flakes around them, oblivious to everything that had just transpired.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (April 2023)

Wow, March was a busy month! Here’s what came out.

 

APRIL 11TH

 
 
 

Even more links now.

AUDIOBOOKS

BOOKS

Note about the Fantasy Shared Universe: I wrote about 25,000 new words worth of content in the form of short story follow-ups to WANDERLUST, LUST & ADVENTURE, & ADVENTUROUS. Also, Demoness is not in this collection, and exists only on my website as a free download. The reason for this being, again, that I intend to rewrite it in the future.

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s quickly discuss what’s upcoming in April.

  • As noted above, A Warm Place 4 Audio will go live April 11th.

  • Haven 6 Audio will go up for pre-order within the next week.

  • Raw V Audio will go up for pre-order very shortly after that.

  • I may be able to get Raw VII out before May, but I’m looking at early May for that release date.

  • I may also get Raw Collected II out.

  • I am aiming to get the rest of my Backlog Collections out, which I will talk about below.

Now, to discuss other and less certain things. I have news, and it is significant.

Firstly, I’ve finished considering what project I will tackle after Raw is finished, and I believe it will make people happy. I am going to do the rewrite of OUR OWN WAY. I’ve been working on it off and on over the past few months, and I’ve actually managed to get about 1/4 of it written in my spare time. If all goes according to plan, I intend to have at least the first novel written before finishing the Raw series and, if I’m lucky, I’ll have the first two written. That said, I am also making the novels longer. I intend to make future novels closer to 100,000 words on average. For reference, Raw novels are about 60,000 words on average. So over a third longer.

Second, the Backlog Collections. I’ve spent more time going over everything, and I have a clearer idea of how this will all shake out.

  • PARANORMAL: This one is what’s coming next. I already have the cover for it ready to go. It’s going to contain PARANORMAL PASSIONS, PINK, ROOMMATES WITH BENEFITS, & PARASEXUAL. So, nothing will be left out. The only one that’s going to get new content is Parasexual. In truth, none of the others have spoken to me. I’m going to try and get this one out soon.

  • POST-APOCALYPTIC: I…am waffling on this. I know it sounds insane, but the more I think about writing The Pale Redhead 4, the more I really, really want to turn it into, like, a full-blown trilogy rewrite. The cover art I got for the collection features Bianca and it’s just so cool. I don’t know. If I do anything with the series, though, it’d have to be a whole thing, and I wouldn’t want to roll it into the collection, I’d want to be its own original thing. So…I don’t know. If I do decide to go ahead with this, I’ll forgo the collection, since that would only leave it with Sex & Survival and A New World, and that’s not nearly enough to justify a collection. I’m going to give it more time.

  • SCI-FI VOL. 02: This will be the last one posted. Working on the cover art for it now. It’ll be Maureen from Like A Fine Wine, because she’s really hot. This collection will include BLIND DATE, LIKE A SEX TOY, DESIRE, & LIKE A FINE WINE. There will be a sequel to Like A Sex Toy, and an Epilogue short or novelette for Like A Fine Wine. And then that will be the last of the backlog collections.

Third, going back and writing new shorts for my old work has sort of reignited in me a love for doing so. I eventually stopped because I got burned out on it, but now I’m thinking I was stupid to stop. Plus, back then, when I wrote those shorts, I felt like they had to have certain things in each one, namely a sex scene, even if it didn’t call for it. But I don’t feel so constrained anymore. I feel like I can write the content a lot more naturally now, and that takes SO much of the pressure off and makes the process go a lot easier.

Consequently, I have decided to go back and write, at minimum, one short for each collection. Granted, it’s not much, but here’s a look at what I’m going with so far.

  • RAW COLLECTED I: I’m at least going to write a short set in between Raw II & III, and possibly tack on another one set between Raw III & IV.

  • RAW COLLECTED II: I’m going to write at least one short set between Raw IV & V, possibly two. Obviously I can’t write one between Raw V & VI, as VI picks up IMMEDIATELY after V. And the same will be true for VI -> VII.

  • MONSTER GIRL INN: I know some people are REALLY wanting to hear about this. Good news! I’m going to write not one but several shorts! Basically, I’m going to write a series of shorts set after the end of the trilogy, each one featuring a main character. I will be adding it into The Complete Trilogy. If you already bought it, you should be able to download an updated version for free. I’ll get it sorted out. Not sure how long this is gonna take to do, but ideally not more than a month or two.

  • HAVEN: Given I already wrote several for Haven, I want to just leave this one alone. I briefly considered writing something, maybe as a stand-alone, but then it’d feel weird not to have it be part of the main collection, and also I don’t want to give people the impression I’m writing a sequel to Haven or something.

  • A WARM PLACE: More or less the same here, HOWEVER, I have decided to write a follow-up novella to A Warm Place, taking place some time after the end of the series. I’ll be able to talk about it more later, but for now, I’ll say that there is one small plot thread that I never really wrapped up that I can with this. Plus, it’ll just be fun to write new A Warm Place material.

  • OUR OWN WAY: Given this is getting a rewrite, no bonus content here. However, the rewritten series will definitely feature bonus content.

And that’s it for the bonus content.

Finally, I’ll talk about the other projects I’ve started and sort of left by the wayside.

  • COUGAR HAREM: So this is not abandoned, but it is sidelined for the moment. Basically, how I want it to go is I need to get Raw and all my short bonus content written and out of the way and then, once that’s done and Our Own Way is safely launched, I will settle the Cougar Harem trilogy into action. I am FOR SURE doing this, to be clear. It’s just getting pushed back. I still feel really good about it. I got probably about 1/4 of the first one written already, and covers made for the first two, with the third in progress.

  • HORROR HAREM: This is also still going to happen, the underwater post-apocalyptic one. I’ve also made at least some progress writing it, and I have the cover art ready to go for it. It, too, got pushed back. It will take up the mantle of second spot once Cougar Harem trilogy is done.

  • OTHER: My sci-fi slice-of-life is also still happening, but has been pushed back further for obvious reasons. I love the idea too much. The only other thing I’ve really got to discuss is my incest fiction. I’ve had more and more people asking about this lately so I might end up editing and posting the mother/son stories I’ve written. As always, I’ve got other ideas coming and going, and a lot waiting in the wings, but for now my plate is FULL. Overflowing, really. The next few months are going to be spent furiously trying to whittle that down to something more manageable.