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.
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.
Alrighty. My thirtieth birthday is on the eleventh, and what better way to celebrate than to make April one of my crazy goals months. This means multiple first drafts, and by golly I will finish editing Witches for Hire. Yes, there will be an Orwell story in the mix, but I don’t know which one is taking the second slot. While the optimistic goal is finishing all of my checklist, the main one is to see where I’m at production-wise. I’ll try to post my progress here and on twitter, but there will be a few days of radio silence when I’ve reached ‘fuck-it-all exhaustion’ and I’m binge watching Supernatural while eating ice cream. I know this sounds unhealthy, but I love testing my mental limits.
Today’s wip update is brought to you by an insomniac drinking way too much Baja Blast.
Current stories:
Witches for Hire – sitting at 50k after NaNo boost.
Keep Calm and Drink Tea – Werewolf story about a polite occult shopkeeper who’s trying to keep monster hunters off his tail while ducking Dracula’s plans to add another pet to his monster kennel. This one is 41k, and I have no idea how long it’s going to be. Loose guess is 60k.
My two YA problem children, a.k.a., ‘Why oh why am I working on stories without sex in them that I’ll probably have to write under another pseudonym?’:
The Strongest Sword – So far only an 800 word beginning about a young man who’s the heir to the throne in another world where a tournament to be king will happen in two years. MC has to decide if fighting for the throne is worth risking his life when the king shunned his mother for marrying a human. This story was inspired by the fact that I am so tired of shounen stories with good chemistry between male leads never going anywhere. I also wanted to do a portal fantasy because I’ve loved those type of stories since I was a wee ogre introduced to anime.
Santa Kills – Slasher about a teen girl who witnesses a guy dressed as Santa kill her neighbors when she’s sick with flu. She passes out, tells her parents what happened, but there’s no sign of the bodies. People start disappearing around town, and then the bodies pop up in the town’s Christmas decorations.
Usually on Nov. 19, my NaNo updates look something like this: “Oh my god, I am so far behind. I only have 15,000 words. Why did I do this? I have to write 10,000 words today to keep my head in the game. I should have started on the 1st instead of 4 days ago.”
This years’update: It’s day 19 and I have 52,249 words written. How the eff did that happen? Am I sleepwalking and doing speed? Screw it, celebratory booty dance because I totz won that shit!
Current theme song.
This year’s NaNo put me in a lot of good places. I have less doubt about writing fast and not churning out crap, and my daily wordcount for this past week is now at 4k. While I still haven’t figured out why certain stories make me write like a demon and others flounder, I am better at spotting problems. I thought Witches For Hire stalled because I couldn’t see the book’s ending, but it turns out not knowing how the whole series will end is what hampered me. That ending came to me a couple days ago and made me hit a 7k sprint. Like I said, my brain is weird.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m in a great mood that I’m seeing a bunch of other writers who have troubles this month killing it this year, but a lot of writers are being bitten by the success bug. I also have to leave you with this pic.
“The brain is a fucked up organ. I told myself that I’m allowed to slack off in September, but here I am in the month’s final weeks and I feel guilty for less progress. I wonder if there was some weird part of my brain that thought I’m lying and I’ll push it anyway.” – Past Me
I never got around to posting this but it’s still relevant. I listened to my body when I needed a break, which led to the second part of this post.
Part II – Not So Flawless Victory(October)
“Now that I’m back to my workaholic ways, I’m speeding through Blood Runs Thicker Than Water’s edits. This is good because I’m usually held up by revisions and editing it used to seem endless. Frankly, I used to imagine hitting someone over the head with a shovel and burying them in my backyard if they read the first draft of it. Today, I genuinely feel that working on my first novel for so long wasn’t a dumb thing to do when I have other stories to write. I’d been faking that I trusted my decision and turns out I was right. So, the next step is I’m going to finish editing and enjoy this victory. In a career filled with rejection, savoring each win is how you survive.” – Past, Past Me
Part III – Start Your Engines!(Today)
1. It’s obvious I suck at keeping a regular blog.
2. Sinus infections are the devil.
3. I finished Blood Runs Thicker Than Water
For your current news, I’m doing NaNo in my usual rebellious way. I have 5 manuscripts open because I have no idea what I’m going to finish first. I’m better at figuring out my writing pace for stories, I increased the heck out of my editing pace, but I still can’t figure out which book will keep my attention ‘til the end of the month. That bothers me, so I am trying to fix it. At the end of November, I’ll look at my results and see if maybe it’s stories with outlines, a lot of plotting, or no plotting that are making it to the final draft stage.
I found out recently that I have 150 stories down the line. I opened evernote and bam, plot summaries overload. Evernote has been a good way to drop plot bunnies while I’m too busy working on other stories, but I didn’t maintain the pastures and bunnies are running amuck.
Yes, I saw this movie.
My biggest problem is shinies. If you give me the dirtiest rock you can find, I will take that bad boy and shine that sucker until it gleams like a diamond. It’s the same thing with stories. My brain spots an interesting take on a half-dead bunny and without wanting to, my head will work out a solid plot, characters and world to revive that bunny to good health. I’m not complaining. I love knowing that I can make any story work, but I’ve saved a lot of bunnies and they don’t want to stay in their enclosures. It’s gotten so bad, I’m developing an Anya complex; which is why I’m going back to the shinies metaphor.
In order to stop myself from growing crazy, I’ve arranged my stories by how easy they are to clean/write.
These are jewels that have a clear beginning, middle, end, and the characters have become real people. My goal is to finish first drafts/editing by the end of this year:
Witches for Hire/Urban Fantasy novel – a wizard, an amazon, and two witches work in a jack of all trades agency taking on magical problems. Most of them have complicated reasons for joining that kind of job, including dark pasts and attaining a green card to live in the earth realm. – 23k/90k written
Angry Sex/Romance novella – a horror writer can’t stop hate banging an entrepreneur responsible for a baseball stadium being built over neighborhood landmarks. – 6k/15k written
Family of Lies: Demetrius(A King or Nothing )/Fantasy novella – Sebastian’s older brother Demetrius is kidnapped by a pirate to help him track down slavers capturing ships while using that pirate’s flag. Demetrius isn’t happy that he’s involuntarily signed up to play hero and gives the pirates hell. – 33,421/In Editing
Royal Persuasion/Romance novella – a dancer sales his body for extra coin so he can score a royal match during the Marriage Games. Hijinks ensue when MC realizes his number 1 customer was the king; a man only the richest are dumb enough to pursue because they have enough money to prevent being assassinated by rivals. – 5k/30k written
Matchmaker/Romance novel – a baker pisses off an entire guild of matchmakers after dissing their computer love program designed to accurately match anyone. – 7k/30k written
Tech Support/Romance novel – a computer techie is caught between not getting killed by his new murderous boss at a spy agency, and the field agent he’s worked behind the scenes on missions with who is on murderous boss’s shit list. – 5k/80k written
War God’s Servant/Fantasy short story – a farmer becomes a legend defending his home from invasion and grabs the attention of the God of War, Galhearne. – 7,246/In Editing.
Those Golden Touches/Romance novel – two screenwriters, Kelsey and Ali, have been best friends since college and worked their way into the big leagues as a writing duo. After Kelsey almost has a heart attack, Ali decides that he wants more than friendship. – 1k/100k written
These jewels are a little cloudy but still valuable. Other than Martian Vampires, I don’t open them unless I’m having serious writer’s block or I just finished a novel and my brain needs breathing room:
Martian Vampires/Scifi novel – a young man is almost killed by an alien vampire and has no idea how he’ll tell his family and friends that their planet is being invaded. – 16k/100k written
Silver Prints/Romance novel – Bishop, a priest, hires a bodyguard to escort him safely to his temple after an attempt on his life. His bodyguard isn’t thrilled with Bishop’s plea not to kill the assassins or priests in general because a charlatan caused a plague in his village. – 10k/60k written
In My Genes/Romance novel – Nathan finds out his father was a world famous racer and his death is why Nathan’s mom freaks out if he drives over the speed limit. After the funeral of a close friend who trained Nathan’s father, Nathan inherits a racing car and has to decide whether or not fulfilling his racing dreams is worth breaking his mother’s heart. (This is a funny story, I swear)
Perseverance/Romance novel – a boy’s family wants him to walk in his father’s mob shoes, but he wants a clean life and a romantic relationship with his male schoolmate.
Blood and Motive 2/Novel sequel – deals with the aftermath of Alex killing his grandfather, and his country opening up communication with the outside world that shunned them because of their demonic civil war.
Lady Fencers(Will change)/Steampunk novel – a school teacher’s scientist father is kidnapped, and she and her fiancé have to find him before one of his inventions is used to assassinate a governor. – 5k/60k written
Henri Hollinger/Cyberpunk novel – a private detective tries to solve a missing person’s case with the mob and corrupt cops after a chip the victim possessed.
Santa Kills/YA novel – a flu-stricken teen witnesses her neighbor stabbed to death by Santa and no one believes her. – 1k/?k
This year, I made the rule that if I finish a novella, another one is added to the list. Two novellas and I can add a novel. I’m still trying to get editing up to my writing speed, but I have a ways to go. I’ll probably make a post about how I handle multiple wips and more info about Witches for Hire later in the week.
To The Pain! 