Blindsighted

I can’t quite decide if I’ve been really good or really bad at authoring this year. Maybe a little of both.

I’ve now been at this full-time author experiment (read: unemployed) for eight months, and though I’ve gotten a lot of writing done, I haven’t been using all the extra free time the way I’d planned. Namely, I decided to leave the day job so that I could have extra time in the day to focus on marketing, since I rarely had time for it before, what with working ten-hour days at the shop, plus writing, plus gym, plus basic human needs, etc. Eight months, and I have yet to spend more than a handful of minutes at actually promoting my work.

Pretty much defeating the purpose of unemploying myself in the first place. (Can I use unemploying as a word?)

I can count on one hand the number of posts I’ve made to any of my social media since my last book release. Maybe even going back to the one prior. I just couldn’t find the energy for it. Bad author, I know.

As for writing? Good gods. Never before have I been able to finish a draft of one book just to turn around and plunge right into the next one the very next day. Usually, there’s a few days’ worth of post-book depression to deal with first before I can get my head back in the game. Lately, though, I’ve just been hammering them out, one after another. After releasing Addiction (Shifting Isles, Book 7) back in September, I wrote Blindsighted (Shifting Isles, Book 8), then Libertas (Shifting Isles, Book 9), then jumped right into a new Shifting Isles side-trilogy, Treble and the Lost Boys (which will be comprised of Ice on Fire, Heavens Aground, and Illumined Shadows, the first of which is written, the second will be done by the end of this week, and I’m hoping the third will be wrapping by the end of January). I’m doing 5-10k words a day, which is WAY above my usual average.

Yet it doesn’t seem like enough. There are days I fly through ten thousand words only to wind up with several hours of daylight left, with which I do absolutely nothing, and I chastise myself for putting the work aside and doing something mindless. I’m writing a lot (for me), yet I could be doing more. I’m seriously considering going back to work just to have something to do.

And the rational people reading this are thinking: So, why not use that extra time to market?

Yeah, took me months to finally hit on that question myself. As for the answer? I have no idea. Laziness? Boredom? I’m not really sure. I love writing, but I hate everything that goes with it (editing, formatting, marketing, etc.), and the last thing I want is for this to feel like a job. I’m afraid it’ll take the passion out of it and kill my momentum.

And I still have so many more books to write. They’re all just sitting there, in notes and outlines, waiting to be written, waiting to be brought to life. There’s a part of me that feels this weird need to rush through them, as though I’m afraid I’ll never get there. Maybe that’s why I’ve been having nightmares about dying again. That was long a recurring problem for me, but I’ve been free of them for years, only for them to suddenly come back these past few months. Yet I continue to laze about, not using my time wisely. I don’t understand it.

Still, despite all that, I got through the tedious aspect of writing once again, and finally have another new release. Blindsighted went live yesterday. I know, I know. Releasing a book on Christmas? Did I not have anything better to do? Apparently not, since I spent the whole day at my computer.

Blindsighted is…different. The story (and one of the characters in particular) is oddly disturbing. Actually, it’s rather disturbing just how easy it was to write all the disturbing things in the story. After it was finished, I had to go back through and strip out some of the darker things because it was just a bit too much. I wasn’t sure I could make myself actually publish the story in its original form. Even tamed and stripped down, it’s still disturbing in many ways. I really can’t even begin to guess what readers might think of it. I even stuck in a trigger warning, and I’m generally opposed to trigger warnings as a rule.

Blindsighted follows Athan Vas-kelen, nephew of Kadyr Vas-kelen, who starred in the previous book, Addiction. Athan wants nothing more than to go back to the land of his birth, but an accident severely damages his arm, making him think he’ll never get to go back home, where life is harsh and all about survival. Still, he’s determined to go, driven by instinct and tradition. He wants to find a good clanswoman from his home land—someone of pure blood, someone strong, someone capable—and settle down before he gets too old.

Then he meets the new neighbor, Summer. She’s everything he’s not looking for in a mate—fragile, deaf, childlike, and mentally-challenged—yet he finds himself drawn to her. The attraction makes no sense, but he can’t resist. He wants her, though he’s determined to keep his distance so he can go back home once his arm has fully healed.

And the more he learns about Summer, the more he knows she would never make a proper mate.

Still, his protective instincts keep kicking in, no matter how much he thinks his mind is made up.

Along the way, he discovers that there’s more than one way to be strong. And more than one way to see.

Blindsighted, now available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats.