Title Troubles...

Hello readers and fellow ROWers,

I hope this week has been a productive one for you.  It has for me!  I wrote about... 5,000 words?  Yay!  This whole Little C. sleeping through the night stuff is really working for me, won't lie.  I also did a heap of edits this week and will continue to do some storyline tweaking for Terris.  I just had an EPIPHANY this week for Nikka's storyline.  There was something that has been nagging me about the end of her storyline, something that has bothered me for a while, and I just figured out the answer.  So great to feel like I got rid of an issue before it came up and I'd written 15,000 words *cough* Zyander *cough* for it.

But all that good news can't come without a price.  Guys, I am having some titling troubles.  This has happened before, sadly enough.  The Angel & Her Gun is still not a title I'm happy with, but I couldn't think of anything better.  Even now, when I hear it I think... spy book.  Am I right?  Thankfully the angel in question does at least carry a gun (colt .44), but man alive, it was hard enough coming up with that one.

I have two book titles nagging at me.  I have the final book of the Five Tribes series to come up with, and the title of the side project.  The first one doesn't have to be chosen for quite a while.  (Another 3 years, though hopefully sooner)  I don't want to tell you why I'm having trouble with that title, because I don't want to be spoilery, but I can tell you that it won't be Sanguis.  I mean, you would think it would be, but nope.  Just like Compis, it's not going to be named after a tribe.

The second is like a novella type thingy and I picked a title, which has "bored" in it.  The Bored <word>.  My sister immediately put the kabosh on the word bored, though.  Her contention is that putting the word bored in the title will make people think the STORY is boring.  Which made me go...huh?  I mean, if I said BORING in the title I could see her point, but boring is different than bored, right?

Seeking opinions, readers.  Because if this title doesn't work, I'm stumped!  I told her I will release it as The Untitled Work.

I wasn't this uncertain before.  It was never hard for me to come up with a title.  In fact, most of the time I had the title picked before most of the book was written.  But lately, I've lost my titling confidence.  I've lost my mojo.

I need to get it back, somehow.  In the meantime, I'll be here, trying to think of titles.

Happy Reading!

What in the heck is a RomPod?

In the quest to stay true to my WOTY: FEARLESS, I've been trying new things.  New story ideas (just in the planning phase, not actually writing yet.  I have enough on my plate for now.), new plot twists for Terris (Oh, guys, there are good things to come and I am so excited about it!), and now another bit of news on the story front.

I have a couple of short stories that I wrote over a year ago in another of my universes.  It's a romance, western, fantasy kind of world.  I've mentioned it before, I'm sure.  The first piece is a story called The Angel & Her Gun  and it is pretty much perma-free everywhere.  The companion piece The Demon & His Lover is unfortunately NOT free on Amazon (because they don't let you set things free if you want to), but it's free just about everywhere else: goodreads, iTunes, and Smashwords.

Samora is a gunslinger in the Wild West, but she doesn't just carry a gun. She also carries the cross ring that designates her as an angelic agent, sent from God himself to battle over mortal souls on earth with the demons who seek to win their ages long battle.
She has two problems: her propensity for getting screwed over by conniving mortals and her love for Gideon -a fallen angel on the wrong side of the law. 

Anyway, that is all to lead up to here:  I got contacted by Amanda McCall of RomPod (Romance Podcasts) who was interested in making a podcast featuring my little story.  I was a bit back and forth about it at first.  I've always pictured Samora with a particular type of voice, you see.  So I chatted a bit with her about what she was thinking and ultimately decided to go for it.  Really, what decided me was how much she loved the story.  That was what convinced me that she would treat it with the respect it deserves.

When she told me the story was going to be available, I went back to the website and downloaded all the previous podcasts.  Thus far, I've listened to Impulse Control by Susan Bischoff and Desperate Measures by Candice Hern.

I just want to say, guys, this is GENIUS!  Seriously, why hasn't someone thought of this before?  I love romances, I love listening to stories on my iphone while I make dinner and work around the house.  I've subscribed to the podcasts and seriously, if you like this sort of thing, try it out!  I mean, it's free, so why not?

Here is the link for The Angel and her Gun.    It won't be available until Tuesday Aussie time, which is like Monday night for those in the US.

Enjoy and Happy Listening!

PS- For my ROW80 friends... I got about 2,500 words written on Nikka's storyline and another 1,500 written on the sexy side project before Little C. came down with a cold and double ear infection.  Needless to say, the rest of my week hasn't gone so well.  But that's okay.  We got some meds for him yesterday and he's already sleeping better at night and will actually leave my lap during the day.  This is seriously good news for my dirty house.

Accentuate the Positive...

Okay, so normally my week is like this:

Seriously, between regular kid stuff (children that need feeding, clothing, bathing and putting to bed at various times), and house stuff and running around all over the place... sometimes I'm just totally overwhelmed by LIFE.  I know I'm not the only one.

It's hard not to let the exterior CRAP get you down.  Everywhere I look, I see blog entries and news reports on how INDIES ARE SO OVER and DON'T BOTHER WRITING ANOTHER WORD BECAUSE NO ONE WILL EVER READ IT OR DISCOVER IT or YOU ARE A TALENTLESS LOSER (Okay, so maybe I told myself that one.)  Seriously, the doom and gloom of the new year are truly horrendous.  Right and left, everyone is predicting that the sky is falling.

Is it falling?  Maybe.  Should we worry?  Well, I don't see how that's going to help.  Is it worth being depressed over... well, that's tempting, I'm sure, but it isn't going to pay the bills.  (Or get another book out there, now is it?)

Personally, I've battened down the hatches.  I don't read the negativity and I avoid anything that's going to be a distraction from my writing.  And thanks to Little C's MUCH BETTER sleeping habits, I have way more energy and time to write.

On that front, I wrote 4 chapters for Terris this week: two chapters for Nikka and two for Zyander.  I also went back and did some necessary story edits for the side project, because the flow was off.  It's fixed nicely now and hopefully back on track.  So in all, I think this week was very successful and that is something I want to focus on. :)

Good luck to the rest of the writers out there and happy reading!