Life Updates, About a Book, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Dear humans,

The partridge in a pear tree part of the subject is a complete and total lie. The female doesn’t have any tasty birds for me, nor does she have a pear tree. Don’t listen to her. Filthy female, getting my hopes up for delicious bird with a dessert of equally delicious fruit.

So cruel.

The book is Grace Draven’s Dragon Unleashed. The female loved this book. She read it a long time ago, as she was honored to be able to proofread it. We hope you enjoy it even half as much as the female did. (She dropped her entire life to read the book. She regrets nothing.)

The life updates portion of this post is a lot trickier. A while back, we posted our schedule for 2021. Well, things have changed. COVID did a lot of changing of things. Current events make some of the female’s choices no longer feasible.

The Seeking the Zodiacs series is being put on temporary hold due to COVID. The second book, Achlys, deals with the theme of poison, disease, and societal unrest.

Yeah. The female plotted this series several years ago. She is not changing the entire series concept to make it friendlier for society at this point in time. This is the official announcement that the female has removed Achlys from the schedule until the end of 2021 at the absolute earliest. We’re sorry.

It would be significantly irresponsible of her to write a Chinese-American lead character dealing with biological warfare dealing with disease, poison, and similar themes right now.

More unfortunately, one of the books in the series is titled Plaguebringer. The cover is gorgeous, and it deals with the sign of Cancer.

Yeah.

No reading between the lines required on this one.

So, we extend our apologies, humans. We do not wish to add difficulties to our Chinese and Chinese-American friends, and that means putting this series aside until people learn to calm the fuck down and stop being assholes to others. The female refuses to work on the series because of this.

Unfortunately, according to her most recently updated personal schedule, she had planned to write three books in this series next year.

Yeah. That’s some significant plan changing.

It gets worse.

She was also going to be starting two other trilogies, both of which involve African-American protagonists who deal with elements of racism in their societies. In one of the books, there are themes that just do not mesh well with the current societal situations.

It is one thing for a book to be written, but there is a point where an author must choose to be sensitive and caring towards the people included in the book.

The timing isn’t right for these books, either.

Truth be told, the one book is something the female could get away with; the underlying themes do not conflict with modern societal issues. She might push forward with that trilogy, as the heroine kicks ass, has amazing hair, and is, frankly, a fun role-model. She’s also a fox in space.

What? The female really likes foxes.

So far, these are the only confirmed novels for 2021:

Dirty Deeds: This collection contains the first 30-40,000 words of Doggone Mess, which is equivalent to the first major arc of the story. It will not be fully closed, although it will have some resolutions. The full release of Doggone Mess will be substantially longer, and there will be old friends in it. The female loves the beginning of Doggone Mess, and she’s super happy she doesn’t have to stop writing after the section for Dirty Deeds is finished. That said, if you opt not to purchase the complete book later, you’re still getting a full story. There are just a lot of unanswered questions because the book will be closer to 150,000 words when finished.

There will be a teaser of Doggone Mess at the end of this mess of a post.

Client from Hell: This is the first book of a three book Mag Rom Com spinoff trilogy. Yes, Satin is in it. Yes, there will be appearances by Satin’s little cupcake. Yes, Darlene will show up from time to time.

Catnapped: Next year’s birthday book. The description gives you all you need to know:

When someone steals Diana’s cat, a former lab animal rescued from death’s door, she calls on one of the most dangerous beings in the universe for help. Cutting a deal with the devil isn’t the smartest move, but there’s no way in hell she’ll abandon Mr. Flooferson the Magnificent to his fate.

Teaming up with the son of a demon, an angel, and one hell of a woman might push Diana to the limits of her courage and sanity. Unless she wants to sell her soul to the devil, she must cope with her new partner, make the most of a bad situation, and find out who stole her cat and why.

What she learns will forever change humanity–and lead to a battle destined to forever change the heavens and the devil’s many hells.

Yes, there are only three confirmed books for 2021 so far.

This is probably a good thing, because 2020? 2020 sucks.

Here is, after minimal thought on it, the stories she’s probably going to be working on, in clusters of relevant books:

• Leashed I Could Do (Sequel: Last but not Leashed.) The heart wants a novel. We don’t know if it will be a novel or novella.
• Ural Be Sorry (Sequel: Owl Be Yours) Unknown if this will be novella or novel.
• Maybe Sequel to Fowl Play. Novella style.
• Serial Killer Princess 2. Like with Leashed, the heart wants a novel. The female doesn’t know if it will be a novel or novella.

There’s a catch. She is thinking about writing these as anthology titles rather than solo titles. While she has the covers for both Leashed I Could Do and Ural Be Sorry, a collection of Mag Rom Com short stories and novellas would be a nice change of pace for her. It would be called the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) Expansion Pack (#1) and would give her the freedom to work on ‘catch up’ stories about previous characters.

So, you might get a Perky meets Perkette short story if the female ditches solo releases and does these as an all-original anthology collection, much like Water Witch explored the Witch & Wolf world.

That would also let her just toss stuff in randomly as she wants to work on things.

Unlike the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) Starter Pack, there would be no previously published titles in the first Expansion Pack.

Basically, the female would be a lot happier with the Expansion Pack than individual releases for the shorter things.

But four maybe novels, maybe novellas equals one really nice Expansion pack, and once short stories and other tidbits are tossed in, the $9.99 price tag will go far. Also, all-new material for the entire collection, which makes everybody happy.

• Silent Stalker

Currently, this series is on hold due to no cover art. It will be a while. The female really, really dislikes working on books she does not have covers for. It is very upsetting for her, and she has had books sit and rot for six months waiting for covers in the past. (and this is just a lot of lost money for her, along with lost time.)

She’s rebranding that specific series, and as such, Blood Bound will be getting a new cover. Since she’s rebranding anyway, and the ideas she has for Silent Stalker allow for it, there will be a third novel released in the Lowrance Vampires world. As the female is cruel, she is withholding the title. She is thinking about when she will be working on these stories, but due to the lack of cover art, late 2021 is the earliest it will be finished. No cover = no book.

That one is outside of our control, sorry. There were booking problems for the cover art, and it will be a while before a designer can get to that specific series. While the Blood Bound cover is beautiful and the female quite loves it, change is coming.

• Pack Justice sequel
• The Edge of Midnight

These two titles will finish off the main Witch & Wolf series novels. Witch Wolf, the second Dustin Walker anthology, will be the next anthology collection featuring Witch & Wolf characters. The Case Files of Karma Johnson will be picked at as time and motivation allow. Right now, License to Kill is attempting to murder the female. Poor female. Rest in pieces.

Peace.

Whoops.

• Up in Smoke is the second Fox Witch novel. Female will be working on it. It is unknown if the female will be finished with it in 2021.

That’s it. The rest of the planned books have all be ixnayed due to society. If you want to get mad, get mad in your own space and not ours. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all–and we’ll figure out how to shut off comments and/or delete your vitriol if you bring it into our space. So just don’t.

Thank you for your understanding.

Here is the promised snippet of Doggone Mess. Be warned. It’s unedited drivel. If you find a typo, great. They’re there. Keep it to yourself. If you can’t stand typos, doesn’t read this. You’ll only have yourself to blame for your unhappiness over sneak peeks of upcoming books.

From Chapter One…

After a long week of work, I couldn’t really blame anyone for grabbing fast food on the way home, but did everyone in Long Island have to visit my specific branch of McDonald’s? From vanilla humans, lycanthropes, practitioners, and centaurs to devils, demons, and even an angel, everybody wanted a hit, and they wanted me to give it to them.

I questioned the angel. How could they eat? Did they eat? Why did an angel want nuggets? Why did everyone want nuggets today?

While all the lines were busy, mine had twice as many people, and I doubted I’d survive to the end of my shift in an hour.

I considered asking some divine for help, but I opted against the idea. With my luck, the devil would join the mayhem and give me one hell of an order.

The nuggets held the place as the day’s reigning champion of sales, with the smart people ordering twenty, as it was approximately fifty cents more expensive than ordering ten. Burgers took the second spot of the day, and the underdog salad came in a close third, resulting in general mayhem in the back, as we hadn’t prepared for a salad bender.

Oddly, the lycanthropes led the charge on the unexpected salad bender. Had someone slipped pixie dust into our dressing when I hadn’t been looking? While filling an insane order consisting of a hundred and sixty nuggets, ten fries, and enough soda to float a boat, I checked one of the labels to make sure.

Nope, no pixie dust.

I could’ve used a hit of pixie dust, but for some damned reason, the CDC got cranky when those infected with a contagious life-altering disease became snuggle fiends. My driver’s license specifically barred me from ingesting any pixie dust, the cruelest of blows in my life outside of my accidental infection with lycanthropy. Pixie dust turned me into a snuggle fiend out on a mission to love everyone, making me a high infection risk.

They would consider removing the flag after I mated, as they believed I would become a snuggle fiend with my mate, which they considered to be acceptable.

I hated the CDC, especially as my virus agreed with their idea. I bet my terrorist virus just wanted me to settle down and used pixie dust to its advantage, although I’d resisted its wicked ways thus far. Damn it, I needed a vacation.

I am cat, see me disrupt my momma’s ability to write. Go me!