Unlucky (?) #13

Finally. Addiction is FINALLY here! My 13th title overall is done and behind me.

(Technically, I suppose Matchmakers could have been the 13th title, but it doesn’t really count, since it was a combined edition of books 10, 11, and 12)

And this one really felt like an unlucky 13. The story wouldn’t come together. Then edits took far longer than normal. Don’t even get me started on my indecisiveness about the cover. And then, once all was said and done, and I was ready to launch the book…

It got suppressed.

I logged in to my CreateSpace account to order paperback copies for my local readers, but the book was blocked off, unable to access. I’d never seen anything like that before.

CS contacted me and said there was a question about copyright. Did I actually own the content of the story?

That really threw me. Of course I own the content! I wrote the book. Then, in typical Type A Personality fashion, I got myself all worked up trying to figure out how to prove that. Send screenshots of my files? What? I had no idea.

Then I thought it might be because I’d recently gone through a legal name change, and updated my CS account accordingly. Did they think maybe I got hacked? At least that was a thing I could prove, but it would mean more paperwork. (Ugh, I’m so done with paperwork!)

Nope. Turned out it was just a problem with the title. Too many books with the same title, and it gets flagged. Potential plagiarism issue. In the end, all I had to do was email them a statement that I am G.R. Lyons and I do own the copyright to the content of Addiction. Simple as that. Got myself all worked up over nothing.

But after pulling teeth to get this book done and over with, seeing that little Suppressed line was like the last straw.

*wipes brow* Phew.

It’s done, now. It’s finally released. Addiction, the seventh book in the Shifting Isles series, and my 13th book overall. Wow. If you’d told me, even a few years ago, that I’d have 13 books to my name, I would have died laughing. Yet here we are. I don’t even know where it comes from sometimes.

In Addiction, we meet Princess Seryn of Ceynes, all grown up now after having been raised by Sam and Ithyn from Betrayal. She’s living with her yangkemi addiction and trying to make the best of it, but it’s preventing her from having a chance to take the throne of Ceynes, now that her father, Emperor Phaerel (who had originally disowned her) has changed the law to allow a girl to ascend the throne. She wants that throne more than (almost) anything in the world. It’s her birthright.

But then she meets a stranger from Falsin, the icy land in the north of the world, and he makes her wonder if she can have something she wants even more than the throne, something she never imagined she might be able to attain.

Both main characters are technically bisexual, but their respective cultures have different views on that sexuality. It’s not a huge part of the story, but it was an interesting exercise in fleshing out a culture and what was considered moral or taboo.

Now, I must get back to writing. Blindsighted (Book 8) is already done and in need of editing, and I’m cruising right into writing Libertas (Book 9), as well as a side trilogy, Treble and the Lost Boys, which takes place alongside Book 8 and pulls a few minor characters from there.

And that’s not counting the other 15 books I have planned…

Good gods. Someone get me a straitjacket.