Total Extreme Intense Ultimate Maximum

Some days you need a change.  You need to take all that stuff in your life and give it a makeover.  But it can't just be... let's make some changes here or there, lalalala.  No, this time, you need to go FREAKING SUPERSONIC ON THAT STUFF!

That's what I feel like today.  February in Cali is like a DREAM (Yes, I know it's March now, stay with me here).  It's like the weather forgets it's supposed to be winter and starts warming up everything.  The daffodils come up, so do the early irises, those little blue bells I don't know the name of, and the grass gets all green again.  The orchard trees around where I live fill to bursting with pink and white blossoms.  This is the time where my spring fever kicks into gear and I just start feeling like I'm going to BURST out of my skin if I don't get stuff picked up and organized!

It's not just cleaning, either.  My writing starts to feel old hat, and I'm just DYING to imbue it with some new zing, or a plot twist or KILL OFF A CHARACTER.  (Don't worry, I didn't this time.  But let's just say that last year there was some sadness.)

It's the time of year that I have to fight the plot bunnies the hardest.  I fritter them away and beg them to stay in their little notebook and stop plaguing me with imaginative visions of plotlines.

So this year, I'm trying my best to harness that spring fever energy while I have it.  I'm gonna try to bump up my chapter count and push forward on all my projects.

I got more writing on Nikka done last week, but not as much as I wanted.  My children sabotaged that a bit with their horrid naptimes.  Hopefully, Terris' wordcount will be on the rise this week, as well.

In the meantime, thanks to my WOTY, FEARLESS, I did something else I hadn't contemplated before.  I posted The Five Tribes series and one of my side projects on ACX to get them potentially made into audiobooks.  I'm not as proactive about it as some of my fellow authors.  I just put up some quick profiles and thought, "Eh, let's see what happens."  Well, what happened is I got an audition.

So that's cool!  If you are a fan of the series and interested in giving feedback on auditions, shoot me an email at: katecauthor(at)gmail(dot)com.  I want to make sure I pick someone who seems to match the voices of my characters.

That's all for this week!  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.

WOTY

Holy Moley, has it really been over a month since my last post??  The good news is that I have my laptop back.  And I've been writing, too.  Except that things took a nosedive over the holidays.  Not in general or anything, just in the writing dept.  Nothing like having the entire family (eight kids, assorted in-laws and grandkids) all together this year to throw plans out of whack.

But that's okay.  I'm here now, and in honor of my first post of the year (as well as my first ROW post of the new round.  That's right, people.  I'm still here to hang with my favorite writers!) I'll be doing a Word of the Year post- which I freely admit to stealing from Kait Nolan last year.

Last year my word of the year was DETERMINATION.  It was a word that got me through Aeris and a couple of teeny side projects.  It got me through multiple child sicknesses, a nasty bout of teething (my youngest got 6 teeth at once!) and 10 days of pushing through so hard to finish.  It was a word I needed last year, and I'm happy with that choice.

This year, my WOTY will be Scrumptious Pretty Fighting!(A shout out to my Kdramas) FEARLESS.
This year, I'm going to try new things.  I'm going to push my creativity to the limit.  I'm going to experiment with pricing and genre and write whatever the hell I feel like writing.  I'm tired of playing it safe and feeling like I have to write a certain way "to make people love me".

Where did this come from?  Well, it's no secret I love my readers.  Just ask the super fans that all received free copies of Aeris.  And since most of them loved the second book, I've been trying to make the third book even better (which is a good personal goal).  The problem is, I've let myself get so caught up in what the fans want that I forgot to look for what I want.  I have two examples.

Luka's storyline has some elements this time around that won't please everyone.  Most of it is stuff that will KICK ASS, because he is such an awesome character, but he's also going to make some big mistakes this time around, too.  He's not perfect.  I've had such a struggle writing that, though, because every time I go to make the big choices, I wonder if it will anger the readers.  Not a good thing to second guess every plot point when you're a writer.

The second is Zyander.  Once again, to my UTTER FRUSTRATION, I think I'm going to have to ditch his story line and start over.  The problem is that unlike Nikka, who is very action oriented, Zyan is a thinker and tends to mull over every little fact before he makes a decision.  This does not make for a fast paced storyline.  The rewriting has needed to happen for a while, but the idea that I might disappoint fans by taking longer to write this book has kept me from doing what I need to do.

So, my WOTY will be FEARLESS and I will do what needs to be done this year, consequences be damned.  That sounds more dramatic than it actually is. hahaha

So, goals for this ROW: Go back to my outline.  Meaning, rewrite some elements of Zyan's story line and make the appropriate changes to the manuscript.  Two, be better about updating my blog.  And Three, continue my side project writing of two days a week.

Oh, for those who asked, if you actually want the other name I write under, send me an email at katecauthor@gmail.com and I'll send it to you.  I've gotten a couple of requests, so I thought I'd share that.  It's NOT YA fantasy, though.

Good luck to all my fellow ROWers in the New Year and Happy Reading!