First Cup of Coffee – July 6, 2021
//Tag: Blood Currency
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The Island of Lost Book Projects
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Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about the things we want to do. We’re asking everyone to name three projects we’ve been planning to work on for a long while and haven’t yet touched.
It’s kind of like the writer version of the Island of Lost Toys. Come on over to find out mine.
Hunting the Siren, coming August 31!
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Book two in the Blood Currency series. Follow-up to Feeding the Vampire.
Same world, different vampire.
A vampire queen grown powerful with age, Imogen has protected her band of nightriders through the centuries. When refugee vampires from earthquake-shattered Europe seek shelter and sustenance, she’s honor-bound to feed them, by any means necessary. When her lieutenants dump the vengeful human man Kasar at her feet, Imogen succumbs to his masculine vitality and her overwhelming hunger for his blood—and his body.
Kasar has survived the breaking of the world, only to discover the vampire queen has slaughtered his sister and her unborn child. With the last of his bloodline dead, only his desire for vengeance keeps Kasar alive. He imagines he can pretend to succumb to Imogen’s seduction—not that he has much of a choice, chained as he is to the foot of her bed—and bide his time until he has an opportunity to kill her. The passion he finds in her arms is unexpected, and impossible to resist. But this haven of desire and satiation could easily destroy them both.
Hunting the Siren Cover Reveal and Newsletter Bonus!
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Here’s the cover for Hunting the Siren!
(No, I don’t know the release date yet.)
This is the novella I was calling Blood Siren for a while, but Ellora’s Cave has a rule that you can’t have blood in the title. Apparently it was overused, which kind of gives one pause. However, I *can* have blood in the series title, so this is officially the second book in the Blood Currency series, led off byFeeding the Vampire. In this one, Imogen is my vampire queen, living on the Russian steppes with her Nightriders. That ripped Mongol dude? That’s Kasar, who hiked out of Moscow after the earthquakes devastated that, too, and Europe sank. He thinks he’s going to go all VanHelsing and hunt Imogen down, to avenge his sister. But Imogen is no pussy cat.
Did I mention I don’t have official cover copy yet, either?
But!
Yes, here’s the sales pitch part: if you sign up for my NEWSLETTER, then you can be the first know these things! I also will include special somethings in my newsletters, which will probably be fairly few and far between, settling into your email in-box like dew on the morning rosebuds.
See, I’ve been exhorted to have a newsletter. (I don’t much like them myself.) So, I did it. Set up the newsletter sign-up link there in the right-hand column of the home page. And like SIX people have signed up. Which is really super sad and pitiful. Thus, I have a deal for you!
Everyone signed up for my newsletter by midnight, mountain time on July 8 will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 gift card to the online book vend0r of your choice! And yes, this includes you six loyal few who signed up already.
And then you get the extra bonus of fun surprises in the newsletter, too!
Isn’t this fun?
Okay, yeah, we’ll see.
Here – have an ice cream cone.
Overplanting and Planning Series Too Close Together
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The desert four o’clocks bloom in these random patches, spots of brilliant color I come on unexpectedly while walking. Better than a Cracker-Jack prize.
Well, Feeding the Vampire is now officially book 1 in a new series! My Ellora’s Cave editor, the lovely and delightful Grace Bradley, accepted Blood Siren, which now has the working title Hunting the Siren, as book 2 in the Blood Currency series!
Yes, it’s been a busy week. Funny how nothing seems to happen for months on end and then, boom! all in the same week.
So this means I have two official series now, Blood Currency and A Covenant of Thorns. It’s three if you count the Sapphire and Platinum books, which I refer to as the jewel series – but no one has given me an official series title for those, so I think they remain a looser grouping. None of these are contracted series, meaning I don’t have money wrapped up in delivering the next book by a particular deadline. From what I’ve seen of my cohorts with contractual deadlines, this is a pretty nice place to be.
Still, it hit me last night that I’m really moving forward with three series now. And, if I sell The Body Gift and The Middle Princess, that could bring it up to five.
It reminds me of the advice always given to new gardeners and landscapers, not to plant too closely together. Of course, the urge to do this is irresistible, especially when you have a vast expanse of nothing nothing nothing.You *want* to fill it up with stuff, as much as possible, as fast as possible.
We did this at our first house. We had this very long strip of back yard out to the alley, bordered on one side by a chain-link fence and a parking lot. SO ugly. And we had less than zero money to put in a privacy fence. So we planted seedling trees and shrubs, all along the fence. One day, at the city landfill, David scored a bunch of hail-damaged bushes and trees Walmart was dumping. He came back with a truck empty of gardening detritus and full of a small forest. We planted them ALL. Some died, but about two-thirds lived and thrived.
All this time we knew we shouldn’t plant them too close together. All the friends, all the landscaping books, warned us not to.
But we just didn’t care. We had this great ugly desert of nothing and we wanted to fill it up, whatever it took. We always figured we could deal with overgrowth later. Or let the next homeowner deal with it.
Are you waiting for the moment of Great Regret?
Never happened. It’s funny, telling this story and realizing that we never regretted that for a moment. In fact, when we decided to sell, the real estate agent walked into the backyard and actually took a breath in wonder. Our tiny house had this forested, shady grove in back, with winding paths and sweet feeling of privacy.
I suppose I’ve answered my own question now. I may indeed have overplanted. But I’m not sorry now. I’d be sorrier to have nothing nothing nothing.
I’ll take the abundance with gratitude.