Selling Houses and Dating Boys Part Deux

This week, I threw it back to a post on selling houses and dating boys. In it, I wrote about how I felt that "I don't get perfect," in either real estate transactions or in dating gentlemen callers.

At the time I wrote that post, I was actually seeing someone quite lovely. Like, "Oh my god, where have you been" kind of lovely. Like "Came over and helped me get my house ready for sale, mowed my lawn twice, cleaned my kitchen, helped me put a door on my cabinets" kind of lovely. Kind of looked like Sage Teon kind of lovely.

And it fizzled out in the way that most of my relationships nowadays usually do: he just stopped calling and texting about two weeks ago.

Womp womp.

Interestingly, I actually have a little bit different opinion about things now as February. What I have since realized is that I tend to hold onto what I have versus taking a risk on the unknown. And when I lose something, my initial reaction is that I won't ever get something that good again so I hold onto it in my mind.

What I am beginning to understand is that "Holding onto the past because I'm afraid of the future is no way to live."

This is not a new discovery, because I wrote that in Empath almost six months ago. But it's taken a while to sink in.

So bringing it back to the TBT post, I did end up getting another offer on my house. The funny thing is, if the first had gone through, I actually would have made less money overall because I would have had to do a rent-back agreement and pay for two months of their mortgage so I could stay until May. Even now, the deal includes a 1.5% assistance on closing, but I still walk away with more money.

With the guy who stopped calling, while he's a lovely human being, I also know that the right place for me is in Pensacola. And if you aren't from there, it's really hard to adapt to that lifestyle. Yeah, beach and sun and fun, but it's also a small town with rednecks (I use that term with love). I couldn't ask anyone to be miserable on my account.

Honestly, the hardest thing for me to do is to accept that the universe has better things in store for me. Nothing, it seems, happens to me because of pure luck or happenstance. My career, my books, everything happened because I did the work. And I always feel like the universe is out to get me, so I'm always working extra hard to keep ahead of Plethegon it. So for me to accept that the universe is taking away something because there's something better down the road is hard, because it would mean that I'd have to accept that the Great Creator universe doesn't hate me.

Yet the proof is in the pudding. None of this - S. Usher Evans, Razia, Empath, any of it - would have happened had I not let go of my old relationship. I wouldn't be moving home, I wouldn't be happy, not really. There is always something else down the road - maybe not better, but different.

A lot of this boils down to perspective, as well. If you described the person I am right now to the person I was in June 2013, Whitney of 2013 would never have believed that this lifestyle would have made me happy. And yet, it does.

Perfect, then, is in the eye of the beholder.

Namaste.

Alliances is Released!

(all gifs are from my new obsession - the unbreakable kimmie schmidt)

ALLIANCES IS FINALLY OUT!

 GO BUY IT ON AMAZON!

Living the Dream

As I've been saying for almost a year now, I'm quitting my day job as a consultant and going full-time into writing.

Now, just as in Empath, Lauren begins to have second thoughts after making a brave, bold statement to face the Anghenfil, I'm faced with the thing I boldly stated I was going to do, and I am fucking terrified. But that's a different blog post for a different time.

I wanted to shed a little light into my own situation, because so often I see other writers who do nothing but write and I feel very jealous. But also, their situation is much, much different than mine, and so just like the #1 Writing Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Compare Thy Numbers to Other Authors - well, you get the picture.

#TeaserTuesday 9 - Where's My Money?

For our final #TeaserTuesday, finally a hint of our plot. I confess, the bank manager is whatever. But it's all about that last line.

Enjoy. :D

#TeaserTuesday 8 - Coworkers

Short teaser today, one of Lizbeth's many frustrated rants with her co-workers.

#TeaserTuesday 7 - Eyebrows

All I'm going to say is... there may be more truth to this scene than certain best friends want there to be... but you know, it was too good to pass up.

#TeaserTuesday 6 - "Ergo, you're lonely"

Ehhehe. I couldn't get away with Lizbeth not prying into Lyssa's sex life. Because it's just...so much fun to see our favorite bounty hunter get all flustered.

#TeaserTuesday 5 - Trust

For today's #TeaserTuesday, we're delving into the issue of trust (do you sense a theme here, folks?). I'm a bit sad that Vel wasn't able to be in this book more, but he still had his presence in his own little way.

Enjoy!

My Trust Issues

I have trust issues.

I didn't ever used to think I had trust issues, because I thought I was an open and honest book. And there's a whole lot that I’m not shy about telling people. But when it comes to really honestly and emotionally connecting with someone…

#TeaserTuesday 4 - Team

Short #TeaserTuesday today, but a pretty powerful message and one of my favorite interactions between Lyssa and Lizbeth.

Basically, Lizbeth rips Lyssa a (well deserved) new one.

#TeaserTuesday 3 - It's all Real

Another short #TeaserTuesday, to continue the theme from yesterday about Lyssa's self-worth tied to her religion.

Self-Worth

Double Life is actually quite a spiritual book; Hell even the cover is Leveman's Vortex, the religious center of the universe. Alliances doesn't quite delve into the religion as much, but Lyssa's spirituality (tied to her self-worth) overshadows almost everything she does.

Lyssa subscribes to the idea that being good or being bad is the key to heaven, not how often she goes to Temple. Her relationship with the Great Creator is personal and private, and not something she readily discusses. For the majority of the first book, Lyssa believes that she is inherently bad, and no matter what she does, she's doomed to burn in the fiery river Plethegon.

#TeaserTuesday 2 - Comparison

For today's #TeaserTuesday, we're continuing on the theme of femininity with this lovely interaction between our bounty hunter and our government investigator.

Femininity

In Double Life, Lyssa was portrayed as very un-feminine. In fact, she spends a great deal of time downplaying her gender to gain more respect from the all male pirates. Still, as part of her character's journey towards becoming somewhat normal, I thought it was important for her to embrace her gender, as it's one of the identifying features about her. 

#TeaserTuesday 1 - "Meet Cute"

For our first #TeaserTuesday, one of my favorite scenes from Alliances - the "meet cute" between Lyssa and Lizbeth. I think it perfectly captures their personalities...

Enjoy :D

Lizbeth Carter

I would like to introduce you guys to Lizbeth Carter. She's the new gal in #RaziaAlliances, and the other half of the titular subject. 

Lizbeth is loosely based on my bestest friend in the universe, the one who I've known since I was 8 years old. When I thought about creating a friend for Lyssa, I knew that it needed to be based on someone who wouldn't suffer fools, or let Lyssa get away with half the crap that the guys (Sage, Harms, Vel) let her get away with.

Things that make me happy

---WARNING: MAJOR BRAGGING POST AHEAD---

---PROCEED WITH CAUTION---

*Contented sigh*

Things are going pretty damn amazing right now. 

I posted this on Twitter yesterday, but I wanted to share some incredible stats:

Sequels

When I first started writing as a pre-teen, my idea of a "novel" was probably somewhere around 20,000 words (at most). So, naturally, I would be able to crank out a book and then its sequel and so on and so forth. At the beginning, I was writing upwards of five books in a series, although the total word count was less than that of Double Life. Often, I would get about halfway through a second or third book and peter out, growing tired of that storyline and moving to something else.

The Peates

Today, I thought I'd provide a little more background on the inspiration and character description for Lyssa's mutually-hated-family, the Peates.

In 2005, I went to go visit one of my dear friends in the land of Sverige (that's Sweden for you uncultured swine). Along the way, we visited (what I think - Tove, please let me know if I've got the wrong Slott) was Drottningholm Slott (again, Drottningholm Castle), which provided me the inspiration for Lyssa's home of The Manor:

Drottningholm Slott is called the "Versailles of the North" for the beautiful, expansive gardens. Even when we visited in winter (yes, I visited Sweden in the winter), they were still beautiful. I remember walking the gravel paths and imagining Lyssa doing the same; there's something about walking around an old castle that puts the inspiration right in me.

When I picked the nearly-complete book up in February to publish it, I took to the internetz to add in some more Swedish tributes.

This lovely lady is Hedvig Eleonora, the mother and grandmother of two of Sweden's kings. And by mother and grandmother, I mean total boss and Queen of the castle. I saw a lot of key similarities between Hedvig and Mrs. Dr. Sostas Peate, so I finally gave the latter a name - Eleonora Hedvig Serann Peate. (In the first couple of iterations, she had no name, because symbolism.)

The Seranns are descended from a long line of Deep Space Explorers, the first being Jora Serann, who was the ancestor in the book who first settled B-39837 and built the Manor. He was an incredibly pious man, reverent of the giant Black Hole of Doom (aka Leveman's Vortex) perched close enough to see in day and night-time. If Eleonora's demands to attend Temple weren't enough to compel the kids to do so, then the constant threat of the Vortex in the sky did the trick.

As it would turn out, the real Hedvig Eleonora had a granddaughter named Hedvig Sophia of Sweden, which became some of the inspiration for Sera, Lyssa's eldest sister.

Sera always had the name Sera, in all the iterations of Razia that she appeared in. Sera came before the name Serann, the maternal bloodline of B-39837. Since the Seranns were notorious for having tons of children (the image of the youngest to the oldest at the dinner table was partially drawn from dinners at my Grandmother's house), there was always a Serann boy for a Serann girl to marry.

Eleonora, however, chose to marry a young, brooding DSE named Sostas Peate. It was a scandal, of course, especially when rumors started that the man Eleonora loved was most interested in studying the Vortex. Never home, and when he was home, he was always in a foul mood, and then - scandal upon scandal - he decided to pluck the most disobedient child from his growing brood and disappear with her for weeks at a time. And, we all know how that ended... (well, if you read Double Life, you'd have a clue).

Sera, unfortunately, seems to have followed in her mother's footsteps and married a man who is never around. Sera Eleonora Hedvig Peate (von Schweden) is married to a scientist, Frederick, who is rarely at the Manor. Sera lives there with her children, as is the Serann tradition; all the offspring have a place to stay until the lastborn daughter is married, then the firstborn daughter inherits the house.
 
Sera is her mother's right hand, the one who was present with most of the disciplining (see: Lyssa Peate), but is deeply religious and believes that piety is the way to eternal happiness. She spends an inordinate amount of time in Temple, praying, thinking, contemplating.

Dorst is the third eldest Peate sibling, and to my great surprise, has fast become an integral character to the series as I write it. When I first wrote this story arc, he was a throwaway character. As I began to work on Alliances this year, I decided to make him her new supervisor. This has opened the door to a great deal of possibilities. You'll see a change in Dorst starting in Alliances based on the events in Double Life, one which goes COMPLETELY over Lyssa's head.

A big life lesson for me (for all of us) is that people do not spring into reality the moment they enter ours, and they do not cease to exist once they leave. A person is the sum of their experiences, their reactions are not simply because they are "mean" or "hateful." Learning to understand where a person is coming from - empathy, basically - is something that Lyssa begins to learn during her slow emotional growth that is the backbone of the series.

Typos

Having never been traditionally published, I don't know if other authors' mothers and friends come up to them and say,

"Oh, do you want me to let you know when there's a typo?"

"Oh, do you want me to rip your eyes out?"

"No, I don't. But thanks for reading."

I'm actually being quite brave to admit there are typos in my independently published book (I paid the $400, I'm a real book publisher now). Because the demons in my mind immediately jump up and start screaming something fierce about my editing abilities and generally how much I'm worth as a person. There's the stereotype that self-pubbed books are pieces of garbage that are slopped together without any care or feeding, and oh dear God I'm perpetuating it.

Ahem.

The thing about books (all books) is that they're 78,000+ word monstrosities. If you've ever had to proofread a paper, or worse - a power point - you know what I'm talking about. The expectation that your book will ever be perfect is folly. And the expectation that the Editor to wave their magic Edit Wand and make everything perfect is...well...ridiculous.

In Goblet of Fire, the fourth Harry Potter book, there was a HUGE error - not typo, but content-based. At the end of the book, when the Priori Incantatem was regurgitating all of Ol' Voldepant's spells, Our Lady of Scotland, Jo Rowling (praise be to her name) got it wrong.

As written, the order was: Hand, Old Dude, Bertha, James, Lily.

As canon, the order should have been (in reverse order of deaths): Hand, Old Dude, Bertha, Lily, James.

I mean... you do not know the thousands of theories that spun off of this error (WAS HARRY LIED TO ALL THIS TIME!?). Harry Potter fandom in the middle of the book releases was never a good place to be.

But my point is that even Our Lady of Scotland, Jo Rowling (praise be to her name) makes mistakes. And so does Stephen King. So does George R.R. Martin.

So quit picking on mine, and enjoy the damned story already.

I've said this about a billion times, I know, but all of my books have already been written. I haven't actually had a "new" idea in about 15 years, but it's okay, cause there's enough ideas to keep me busy for another 15. Double Life was 75% written when I picked it back up in 2013. I know, because I remember reading it in my Identity and Access Management class and saying, "Gee willackers, this book ain't half bad. I should publish this."

So when I actually got serious about it (a year later), the majority of the work in the book was simply content and grammar edits, with some limited new content.

Editors will tell you that it's impossible to edit your own work. I agree with that with the exception that if there's enough time between writing and editing, you can do a bang-up job yourself (and sometimes I completely forgot that I wrote something the day before and it's brand new!)

That is why I made a conscious decision to NOT go with an Editor for Double Life, only beta readers.


Do I regret that decision?

Maybe a little. My OCD may be quieter if I did.

That being said, Am I going to hire an editor for Alliances?

You bet your sweet fine ass.

Again, the difference is that with DL, it was an edit job, and with Alliances, I'm writing basically the entire thing from scratch. Being so close to the action, and especially with the twisty-turny plot twists that are so awesome in Alliances, I need an extra sixteen set of eyes to help me make it the best book I can make it.

And once that's done, it will go to a copyeditor.