#RainbowSnippets

Weekends means Rainbow Snippets-time here on the blog, since I’ve joined the Rainbow Snippets group on Facebook. According to their description, “it’s a group for LGBTQ+ authors, readers, and bloggers to gather once a week to share six sentences from a work of fiction—a WIP or a finished work of even 6-sentence book recommendation (no spoilers please!).”

This week I’m snippeting from my upcoming book Find His Way Home. It will be released on May 27th and I’m super excited about it.

Blurb:

Shakespeare-loving teacher Elliot Dunn has been unhappy living in the big city for a long time. He yearns for fresh air, visible stars and stillness, but his relationship with divorce lawyer Mick Hudson keeps him from moving away.

When a dramatic event occurs in Elliot’s class, he’s shaken to his core and suddenly can’t stay anymore. He leaves his partner of two years behind and returns to the tiny town in the mountains where he grew up.

Living in a rented cabin in the woods, with only an owl for company, he slowly regains peace of mind. But being away from Mick is agonizing, and when a ghost from Elliot’s past comes for a visit, everything comes to a head.

Elliot is faced with a hard decision: stay on the stress-free mountainside alone, or return to the hustle of the city and try to make a life with Mick?

Told from Elliot’s POV, it’s after the “dramatic event” that happens in Elliot’s class:

(And as usual I can’t keep to the stipulated six sentences)

Elliot held his breath for a moment before whispering, “I could go back home.” Mick stiffened. “I hate it here.”

“I know.” The thickness of Mick’s voice hit Elliot like a freight train, but he didn’t take back his words. He couldn’t.

“I have to go home. At least for a while. I need silence.” He caught his lower lip between his teeth to stop it from quivering. “This was the last drop, you know?”

Mick nodded and tightened his arms around Elliot until they felt like bands of steel surrounding him. “What about us?”

“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “You could come,” he whispered, knowing what the answer would be.

He heard Mick inhale a shuddering breath, and a drop of wetness landed on Elliot’s cheek. “I wish I could.” Mick voice trembled.

“I can’t stay. Even for you, honey.” Elliot was crying now too, big hot tears wetting Mick’s expensive wool suit jacket.

“I know.”

Pre-order links are available here: JMS Books | Amazon

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads. Feel free to stop by and say Hi! I love new friends!

Save the date: May 27th

Happy Saturday, everyone. Here’s the cover, the blurb, the release date, and pre-order links for my next release: Find His Way Home.

A fabulous way to start the weekend, don’t you think? 🙂

Pre-order links:

JMS Books | Amazon

Planning?

The other day I wrote a formal schedule for my writing. I have all these projects and ideas floating around in my head, but I haven’t written them down properly, so I decided to do it. To see if it was doable.

And then I kind of croaked. All my ideas and projects that felt so manageable in my head, was overwhelming on paper. It looks like a lot:

Ambitious. At least for someone whose approach to this writing thing so far has been I want to have fun. 

But if I break it down, it isn’t so much. The Christmas story (that’s now officially named Red Popcorn Strings and Gumball Rings) is written and at about 12K words, so editing won’t take too long.

I don’t have official deadlines for Never Before Him and The Locked Room, even though I really wanna finish NBH asap.

The JMS Submission call I mention is this one, Colors of the Rainbow. It’s the second time that JMS posts a sub call that fits an idea I already had. It’s like she looks into my brain to check out my ideas and before posting submission calls. Do I need a tin foil hat? 🙂 So I feel like I have to write my idea and submit it. It’s going to be about a boy with cinnamon eyes, so I’m calling it Cinnamon for now.

Then there’s finishing everything in June (deadline RPSAGR July 1st and Cinnamon June 30th), before participating in Camp NaNoWriMo again in July. And I’ve already got a story started for that one (Don’t Forget to Breathe). I abandoned it some time back (I tried plotting a story and it went straight to hell—I’m a pantser), but I want to get back to the boys, so I’m gonna rewrite the words I already got and try to finish it.

Sounds reasonable, right? I can do it, right?

It’s just…I don’t usually do long time planning like this, so it feels big and scary. And real.

How do you plan your projects? And how far in advance? Let me know in the comments. And let me know what you think about my plan. Is it doable? Have I lost my mind? Do I need my head examined? 🙂

Writing update and NaNo winner!

Let’s start with the most important stuff:

Woop woop. I did it! I won Camp NaNoWriMo and reached my goal of 20K!! *doing the happy dance*

And with lots of time to spare, too.

Here’s details of last week’s  word count. Tuesday looks terrible, and even though it was, it wasn’t that terrible. I wrote more, but I deleted several hundred words because I rewrote a part of the story, so that’s why the word count only increased with 296 words that day.

I finished on Wednesday as you can see, but I decided to keep writing the entire month. That’s what I had planned anyway, and I want to see how many words I can manage in a month. That’s why I changed ink color again. Black ink means words over the goal, I’m still writing Never Before Him.

Total word count after 3 weeks: 22692 words.

One week to go. Do you think I’ll manage 30K? And before you answer: I haven’t written anything today, so it’s only 6 days before the end of the month. But I think my goal for next Camp NaNoWriMo in July will be 30K.

Look. It says winner! 🙂

Monday update and #NaNo

Here’s my weekly update and Camp NaNoWriMo progress:

As you can see, I wrote less words this week than last, mainly because I woke up on Thursday with a fever and a cold. But I managed to surpass the weekly target anyway, so I’m still way ahead.

The total NaNo word count yesterday, after finishing those 1147 words, was 16026 words. So only 4K words to go until I’ve reached my goal. According to the NaNo site, I only need to write 284 words/day to finish on time. I think I can manage that, don’t you? 🙂

I’ve been working on Never Before Him all week, and it seems that it will be a little longer than I originally planned. I’ve written 8700 words in the story so far, and Leon and Jerome haven’t even met in person yet, only talked online.

Jerome is an interesting character to write: he doesn’t speak, but communicate mostly in writing. It’s not because he’s unable to, but because he’s chosen not to (because of reasons). So I have to be mindful and not let words slip out, which is easier said than done. Instead of asking “what?”, I have to convey it with body language.  It’s fun and challenging and it has made me realize how much we depend on our words. Or even just sounds.

And that’s all for today. Keep your fingers crossed that next week’s writing update will say “I FINISHED CAMP NANO” 🙂

Have a great week.