from the owie in the roleplay window, I made Bee a book cover. *grins*



Hardly a Van Gogh effort, but oh well lol.

I'm an impatient wench. Want to know how impatient I am?

I finished editing my part of Lotus In The Wild this weekend even though me and Margie weren't gonna start it until tomorrow. I couldn't help it, I got all angsty missing the characters and started to reread it then just went ahead and edited as I read.

I also...wrote the opening scene for the next in the series, Lily Of The Valley. Again, I couldn't help it. My screensaver came on and some of the pics in it are of Tiernan all nakey and hot and pretty and...I couldn't help myself. And we're not supposed to start Lily until the end of the month.

So yes. Impatient much, Fae?

I also wrote another thousand words of my NaNo but am too lazy to upload it for validation right now so you'll just have to take my word for it. That put me officially over 30k for the month. Woot, I'm on track to finish in ten days if I keep going like this.

How is it possible to be writing a book in a month, editing a completed one, waiting impatiently to hear on two other completed books out to the publisher, starting writing *another* book and still be sitting here going *whine* "I wanna write..."?

And darn it Poppet's not on to indulge me so I guess I'll go to sleep. You know, sleep, that thing I don't get much of lately but randomly got 7 hours of today. And yet I'm still bored. God I need help lol. There's just no words for the lame. Is there such a thing as *too* much writing? I hope not or else I'd be in some serious trouble.

Care to see the gorgeous faerie boy who's made his way neatly into Brandr and Cate's story, Lily Of The Valley as the third in a threeway relationship? Meet Tiernan:

( So not safe for work )

*fans self* Smex walking, I tell you what. *licks him*

Alrighty, so here we go with the waiting period again. Margie and I did a buttload of editing to Bee Among The Clover in the attempt to get it down to the 125k the editor wanted, but couldn't do it without completely sacrificing the story and the characters. 40k words cut is a third of the book. SO...we split it into two 80k novels instead. The midway point was a beautiful "happy for now" ending and with a bit of tweaking and some minor additions we were able to split it there and have two full novels for the price of one without losing the character and plot development.

The first is now titled Crocus In The Snow with the second keeping the moniker of Bee Among The Clover. We sent both off to the editor today so now we wait. *fingers crossed* We also finished up Lotus In The Wild and will start editing that probably here soon, as well as working out the fourth in the series, Lily Of The Valley. Man we are just cruising right along, huh? Pretty proud, yes indeed.

I'm not doing as well with NaNo as I'd hoped but with the books now off to the editor and not having started anything else, I should be able to catch up.

Whew, what a whirlwind. As I told Margie just a bit ago, being a writer for real is a lot more exciting than I ever thought it'd be lol. I just want to squee at the top of my lungs I'm so excited. Gosh I hope she likes the split.

Lotus is done save for Margie's half of the epilogue and Lotus is finished. *dances around* I know other people might be more prolific but Margie and I just finished writing two massive over 100k word novels in one year. That's pretty damn good lol.

Gosh I'm gonna miss em though.

Margie and I both very much want to write a prequel to the Garden Of Exile series, to tell the story of how Roman/Marcus first became enslaved by Wulfgar. The problem with that is there is going to be a lot of non-con, sexual violence and squicky stuff that we're pretty sure publishers won't touch with a ten foot pole.

But we still want the story. So, I was thinking, what if we wrote it and then offered it as a free-to-read on our website, in .pdf format or hosted right there on our server, whichever. I thought it might benefit us in a couple of ways, in giving visitors to the site a free to read full length novel, which is always fun, as well as maybe spark some serious interest in readers about the rest of the series, which they'd need to buy to read.

What does anyone think, good idea, bad idea?

I felt it when Margie and I finished Bee Among The Clover and I feel it just as strongly now with Lotus In The Wild. It's like watching your child go off to college alone and all you can do is hope you did everything right and gave them everything they needed to succeed.

We're still waiting to hear from the publisher about Bee. The partial was accepted, as most everyone knows, and now we wait for the response to the full manuscript. We're not overly concerned by the timeframe, if at all, we've been keeping ourselves busy, as evidenced by the near completion of Lotus.

Lotus has turned out to be shorter than Bee but then, Bee was an absolute epic monster lol. It will probably top out at just under 110k words, as opposed to Bee's just over 160k words. I don't think it's at all lacking, despite being a good 50k shorter.

I'm personally thrilled with the way it's turned out. We weren't real sure when we started just what we were going for or what was going to happen, we had the barest beginnings and let the musi take it from there. Sure, we had to go back and rewrite some chunks and added nearly 6 new chapters smack in the middle of it, but in the end it all ties together in a nice little bow and I'm very proud of it.

Now as for the next in the series, Lily Of The Valley well...let's just say we haven't the faintest idea what we're doing with that one, other than it will likely be amusing as hell because both Cate and Brandr are always good for giggles.

But I'm mourning the loss of Kintaro and Wulfgar. The little Lotus and the big barbarian have made an astounding impression on me and I will miss them so much. Even more than Roman and Aron, I think, because Roman and Aron at least will be revisited in the final book of the series. Wulfgar and Kintaro will, sadly, be gone for good. I want to cry at the thought.

*sighs* Well, I guess it's the epitome of the old saying "All good things must come to an end". I just wish it weren't true. Darn me and my attachment to musi. I'm so used to them staying for always and continuing to give me story ideas. It takes some getting used to, to say goodbye all the time.