New Year Writing Plans

Happy 2015, everyone! The new year has been underway for nearly a week now and has already been a busy one. With every new year, I think about the books I hope to write. I've been pondering on this post for a while, wondering where 2015 will take me with my writing and this year, things are starting off a bit differently.

Toward the end of 2013, I had a very set schedule for 2014 in regards to writing because of having contracts with Ellora's Cave that needed to be fulfilled. Those books were set to be written, each had a deadline and those deadlines were pretty tight. I had to keep my head down and write, write, write throughout the end of that year and the first half of 2014 to meet those deadlines and fulfill my obligations. Of course, right after I turned in the last book to meet those obligations, things started to get sticky with Ellora's Cave. Admittedly, it did throw some of my writing plans (and motivation) a bit out of whack.

But as I've learned in my years of working with horses, when you're thrown, you get back up, shake it off, grab the reins, and get on again. And so toward the end of 2014, I began work on a new novella for MLR Press, Acting on Love, a story featuring Brandon Alexander and Shunichi Miyamoto from the Conquest series. As Jesse will tell anyone, those two need some resolution in their relationship ;-) I handed in that story at the end of November and as it looks now, it will be my first release in 2015. I don't have a release date yet, but that story coming out is one absolute book related thing that'll happen for me in this shiny new year. 

Now, for the rest of the year. I don't have anything already contracted. I don't have any stories due in by a certain time. Really, I'm free to go in any direction I want with what I work on and the path I decided to take after handing in Acting on Love was to go back to the Instincts series. I'm currently working on a story putting Daniel Valente and Ryunosuke Kimura back in the lead. Ryu's also had some unfinished business hanging out there for a while and it's time to work on that now too.

Once that story is finished, my next plan is to go back to Terra for Book 3, which is Lark and Zane's story. So you see, it's looking like 2015 will be the year of me returning to my series, whereas 2014 had me releasing a lot of stand alone titles. And I'll admit, I'm thrilled to be getting back to my familiar friends with all my series and working with them again :-D

There is one other story that I have, which is a stand alone title. I'm happy to say that one of the books that had been contracted by Ellora's Cave has been given back to me. This story had not yet been published and the working title was Heart's Gamble. As some of you may recall, I had requested rights back on the four books that I had with Ellora's Cave, three titles that are published, one that had yet to be published. While Ellora's Cave is still considering returning my rights back to me on the published works, they did go ahead and give me back the rights on this not yet published manuscript. They have also issued two more payments to me, and at this moment, have paid me up through August 2014. So there has been positive developments there. There's a chance I might work to get Heart's Gamble out this year, but really, I need to let the story sit for a while, then go into with a fresh mind and do some rewriting. Still, I wanted to give an overall update on things with EC and me.

And there we go! What I'm thinking at the moment of working on 2015. My deepest gratitude to everyone for all your support through not only this past year, but for all years that you've been sticking with me on this storytelling journey. I'm sending out good wishes to everyone for a new year filled with happiness and many good books to read!