I’ll just start this off by saying my health has been trash and Covid has a vendetta against me. For the time being, I’m feeling better and trying to get back on schedule. Family of Lies and Witches For Hire are the only stories I’ll be working on under this name, so if I don’t get the plague again, there shouldn’t be any more delays with them.
The other stories will take a back seat to what’s under Indy Strange because that’s the name for most of the single stories and a few duologies/trilogies. *Sigh* Starting work on the queer steampunk series about some pen fiends and lady fencers would be nice, but I don’t have the brain capacity right now to even work on worldbuilding. I will try to make room for it at the beginning of next year.
For now, I think I just want less complicated magic stuff, killings, and sexy times. The exception to that are the series I already named and Banshee(YA UF under Tamia Benson) because that refuses to be put aside.
I’m also contemplating some things like Twitch once I figure out how to do it properly with the format I’m thinking about. That’s a maybe because there are a bunch of other things to consider too.
I seem to have found a better writing medium for myself through serial stories. My major problem with publishing is sitting down to edit long ass books, but editing an episode at a time has improved my output. I can be a day or two late, and the world doesn’t end. I’m not trying to make a deadline written in stone, and for some reason, the format on serial story sites makes it easier to catch mistakes.
I’m really happy with my experience so far, and I’ve written consistently in the past couple of months more than I have in years. It really helps my self-confidence too knowing that I can accomplish all this.
My main site is Patreon under Indy Strange. So far, there are four stories.
Family of Lies – James(now book one in the Family of Lies series): Fantasy road trip book with food thrown in. While JAMES is an M/F story, there are some queer elements to it. You also get to see a future love interest for one of the brothers.
“As someone born of hidden monsters, James wants very little to do with the humans around him. Especially since joining their world was how his brother died. On the anniversary of his brother’s heroic death, all James wants is to get lost in drinking at a tavern, but bandits attack and he’s mistaken for one of them by a knight and knight-in-training.
After the mess is cleared up, James somehow finds himself on a journey with the do-gooders and trying to see what his brother found so beautiful about the human world.”
Blood and Lies (First book in the Knightmages series): High Fantasy with my version of Merlin’s descendants. M/M, but the love interest isn’t introduced until nearly the halfway mark.
“Loyalty is the only thing that matters in the Burroughs family who make a living summoning demons for tyrants. When Alex’s father, Nicholas Burroughs, betrays them by not sacrificing his firstborn to summon a demon, they execute him. Shunned as a ‘living crime’ among his family, Alex grows to hate everything about them, including the knowledge that his only future will be helping to bring more misery into the world.
This drives Alex to spite his family in a way no one else has dared before – he escapes from them. Now Alex must train to become the best mage or just like his father, he’ll die a traitor too.”
The Groom of the Wolf General: Steamy Fantasy with tomb raids and power-ups. M/M Romance starts right off the bat.
“Juro is the classic tale of a young man who grew up too quickly after his father died and being stuck with a step-mother who hated the sight of him. Luckily, he’s only neglected and able to live his life until his sister’s fiance faces banishment. Instead of allowing her daughter to be cast out, his stepmother forces Juro to take her place.
What Juro doesn’t expect is for the rough man whom he’s joined with to care for him more than anyone else ever has and bring out his own strength.”
Support Your Local Medium(just added): A little bit of The Mentalist and Criminal Minds with psychics added into the mix. Y’all meet the Love Interest at the beginning.
“What does Griffin Podrey do about the cadre of ghosts stalking his every move; he makes a profit off of them. Where there’s a buried body is also a paycheck waiting to be earned. That’s the conclusion he came up with since ghosts ruined any semblance of him having a normal life. Word has gotten around about him though, and not just among ghosts. A secret task force who deals with supernatural problems tracks him down and gives him an ultimatum; work for them or they’ll end his business.”
Soooo, in order to get over the writing hump when my books were unpublished, I started another pseudonym. Like Sam Argent, there are a bunch of references in it: Indy Strange.
Indy – shout out to my entire family being from Indiana(except me, LOL).
Strange – self-explanatory. I’m weird as fuck and have long accepted it.
Of course there’s also a tv reference in there. Indy Strange. Backwards, Strange Indiana. Eerie Indiana.
On Twitter, you can find me here: https://twitter.com/MeowWorlds, where I’m more likely to post. This name will be used for shorter stories or series that are 2-3 books(there are a tons of these in my head).
Currently out under Indy Strange are Veiled Dancer(Gay Fantasy version of The Bachelor) and War God’s Servant(weird horny War God story). Next will be Blood and Motive that I’m currently working on the edits for. I actually hid a few blog posts on this site about Blood and Motive to be extra sneaky. I just wanted to be in a better headspace and share all this when I was getting enough work done under both names.
As for Sam Argent, that is now the name I’ll mostly publish long series under. Family Of Lies will have at least 12 books(including a prequel). Witches For Hire might clock in at five or six books plus a sequel series called Knights For Hire.
Loose schedule for Sam Argent 2020-2021:
Re-release of Witches For Hire because it needs the least amount of editing.
Family Of Lies – James
Family Of Lies – Kevin(maybe less than a month after James since it doesn’t need any big revisions so far).
Witches For Hire 2
Family Of Lies – Alice
Family of Lies – Rebecca
Family of Lies – Sebastian(again, shorter release time because it doesn’t need heavy revisions).
My Young Adult name, Tamia Benson, hasn’t been forgotten. The Strongest Sword is still on pause, but the f/f series Banshee will probably have a first draft completed by the end of this year.
My health is holding out pretty well. I just have to avoid human beings until a vaccine is out because I live in Georgia, and they’re trying to spread it like the plague here. Anyways, that’s all for now, so now I gotta go find all those hidden posts. Oh and here’s the Indy Strange blog.
You’ve probably been wondering why you got more radio silence when Kevin was wrapping up. Well, I’ve gotta add myself to the list of Dreamspinner authors leaving the publisher.
Honestly, Kevin probably took so long for me to edit because deep down I didn’t know if I wanted to submit it to Dreamspinner. The late payments were stressing me out because my health makes me dependent on my parents, but royalties keep me from being a financial burden to them.
Maybe because I let Dreamspinner know about my health issues and how badly I needed those payments several months ago, I’ve been lucky enough to be paid through the third quarter. It would be easier for me to wait it out longer since I’ve gotten paid vs. the process of resubmitting books or self-publishing that’ll earn decent checks in a year(hopefully), but why should I have to beg for the money I earned? And even if I’m getting paid, the other writers, editors, artists, and translators should be paid too.
Another reason I’ve been quiet is because I didn’t have it in me to speak a civil word on this topic because of authors who felt the need to denounce those who’ve spoken out about the missed payments from Dreamspinner. Being paid 2-3 weeks late has left me at times too anxious to write, but these people can’t even summon empathy for those owed payments for much longer? Is it really that hard to not be a shitty human being? Just… SMDH.
As of right now, I’m still writing, but most of my time has been spent on learning self-publishing. It would have been nice to just start submitting work as soon as my health improved, but that was not to be.
*Sigh* Due to my health, it’s gonna take time to sort out my new writing path, so thank you everyone who’s stuck it out with me this far. Also, good luck to former and current folks dealing with Dreamspinner unless you’ve been an asshole to the ones who don’t have their money. If readers are wondering, it doesn’t matter to me if you still purchase my books right now because I don’t have a timeframe when they’ll be available again.
As I’ve stated on Twitter, thank you everyone for the well-wishes and staying patient with me.
Soooooo. That whole feeling better thing lasted for like a week and a half after my last post, and then turned into an agony that left me crying in bed too many nights to count. It turns out that my pain flares were actually coming in cycles. Deep stabbing muscle pain for 1-2 months while every part of my body was a charley horse waiting to happen.
Next, a month of stomach pain that made it hard to eat or sleep without feeling like I was gonna puke.
And a few months of excruciating nerve pain mixed in.
Rinse, repeat for a year.
All my writing took a hit because it was hard to concentrate, and my memory got so bad that it scared me a little.
Losing weight was an experience that I will not ever fucking do again in the future. If this wasn’t for the sake of my legs and feet, I would have tapped out.
On to the wonderful world of writing. Kevin’s ending has bugged me for an annoying two years, and while I’ve seen part of the problem, at the back of my mind, I knew there was something off. In all of the previous damn revisions, I still managed to miss a few events that were out of order and created big plot holes. That feeling is finally gone after the last fix, but I’m still reading through it to make sure I seamed it back together without fucking it up in other places.
Witches For Hire 2 is coming along nicely. It stopped fighting me once I realized that the things that don’t quite fit the main characters of the current series, other ideas can go into an offshoot. The offshoot will be way down the line, so I won’t talk about it much until after WFH’s four other books are wrapped up.
That’s all I can think of for now, so see you, Space Cowboy.
It took a long time to admit this, but basically, most of the editing I do during winter ain’t worth a damn.
It’s frustrating to realize this after how much I went through to get work done when I was in so much pain, but it’s best if I just accept my limitations before repeating the same bullshit. So any editing I don’t get done before mid-November will probably stay unfinished until late Spring or Summer. That’s pretty much my writing schedule from now on. Binge writing/editing from Spring through Fall, and only slow writing sessions when Winter hits.
I haven’t run into another snag in Kevin’s edits yet and will finish them sooner than I thought, but my official word is that it’ll be ready in June.
Banshee might be ready to submit in September. Even though the writing is going quickly, I’m leaving some space for the possibility of edits dragging a little.
Witches For Hire 2(Witches For Hire: Covens) is really coming together too.
The Strongest Sword is on pause until my brain sorts out the worldbuilding and more of the middle section.
The weekend zapped my spoons, so this’ll be all for the day.
Move along. There’s a short blog post today due to making bad decisions like arriving 20 minutes before Infinity War starts because it totally won’t be as crowded during the second week. My eyeballs suffered from sitting in the fourth row. It wasn’t as intense as seeing Mad Max: Fury Road in 3D, but that’s still a colorful ass movie to watch when you’re almost right up against the screen.
In the comments of my last post, Susana Perez brought it to my attention that the prologue was missing from Sebastian’s Audible version. Dreamspinner got in touch with Audible to fix it, and now the prologue is included for all copies. I’m sorry for finding out this late that not everyone was getting the full story. Part of the reason I focused on improving my health these last two years is because as a published author, I need to be lucid enough to stay on top of these things.
If you guys spot any other problems like this, this site is the best place to contact me. Twitter messages can get lost in a sea of notifications, especially with all their algorithm changes, but my WordPress email notifications stick out pretty well.
This Saturday or Sunday(depends on when I see Infinity War), I’ll write a progress report for Kevin and Banshee. The latter is picking up nicely, so that’s not gonna take up as much time as I thought.
Kevin is a really hard book to write. The romance, the action, the darker themes, and its title. Funny thing about Kevin was that I accidentally used one of my uncle’s names for it. It didn’t even occur to me at the time while I was writing Sebastian why one of the independent brothers who likes tinkering with things had to be named that. The light bulb didn’t come on until I was explaining more about the characters to my mom when Sebastian was published and she started laughing. She was like, “You named the blacksmith Kevin?” I remember smacking myself on the head because, yes, my very independent uncle who worked on cars would obviously be on my mind while creating that character. Luckily, they only share a name and have very different personalities/physical attributes, or this would have been hella awkward.
When my grandpa died in December, my Uncle Kevin made it easier to get through the funeral by just being his lively self. And we really needed that because losing our Paw Paw was rough. He was a giant personality you couldn’t forget ten years later after meeting him only once. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a proper grieving period to get used to that loss because in February my uncle Kevin died of a heart attack.
So yeah…it was a while before I could even look at the Book Kevin’s file without crying. Honestly, if my uncle and the character had been more similar, it would have been years before I could seriously work on it again. Being too emotionally and physically drained is why this blog hasn’t been updated since September. Now, I am finally all right and enjoying writing like I used to.
Thanks to Fall being around the corner, my energy is at top level, so I get to amp up my work load again. The main goal is to write like hell until late Spring when the temps start rising again, so I’m less frustrated during forced downtime. After I finish Kevin’s synopsis, I’ll be switching back and forth between YA wips and novellas. Juggling two pseudonyms is definitely gonna be an experience. Errands have wiped me out, so this’ll have to do it for now.
To The Pain! 