Better late than never

It’s been quite a while since I wrote one of these and I apologize for the neglecting my blog. Last year was difficult for everyone, and I was no exception. There is hope on the horizon now, and I look forward to the day we have some normalcy again.

In 2019, I didn’t write as many novels as I did the previous years. I was dealing with losing my best friend’s mother, who was a mom to me as well, and I wrote Aleksander’s book, which took forever. Although I loved every minute with Rafe and Aleksander, it put me way behind. My preference is to work a year ahead, and I’d fallen off that pace by several months by the start of 2020.

When the world shut down, I threw myself into writing. By October, I’d written ten books and two short stories. I was back on track but also horribly burned out. I didn’t want to think about composing paragraphs, let alone construct complex plots. So, I forced myself to stop creating new stories for the rest of the year. I would’ve liked some peace from my characters to find myself again, but the D’Vaires are persistent and I got maybe a day without them.

After a couple of weeks, I was glad they hadn’t left, and I was past ready to get started when January rolled around. I changed my schedule drastically for this year to keep myself from falling off pace, but also to prevent more burn out. By mid-January, I’d crawled into my cave and wrote the first two novels for 2022. I’m on a break now, which allows me to get caught up on all the things that go along with being a writer before I dive into two more novels.

With this new schedule, I’m still not sure what 2022 looks like. I know there will be plenty of D’Vaire for you to enjoy, but whether it’s heavier on novels versus short stories, I can’t say yet. Short stories are an ongoing issue for me. I have to keep myself from spinning it into a novel and they take just as much outlining as a book, so it’s not a timesaver to get out more content to you.

On the financial side, they also take much longer to pay for themselves so we’ll see how often I continue to churn them out. Perhaps I’ll choose a different format and compile a few into an anthology, but that means I’ll need a lot more ideas. It’s definitely still a mystery where I want to go, but the good news is I have a ton of guys who want their stories told and I’m happy to listen to them as I got down their tales. I did write the first romantic short story and that will be out later this year.

I hope you enjoyed Brazenly Daray! And thank you so much for making it a bestseller! Cass and Teverild were one of those books where I had nothing but fun. They were persistent and determined that their story was exactly the way they wanted. I was pleased with the results and they are definitely in my top ten of couples. It’s getting really crowded at the top, but I can’t help adoring every couple in the D’Vaire universe.

With a new book out, the first question on everyone’s minds is what is coming next. A short story is next! It was supposed to be one driven by Aleksander and Rafe, but several other D’Vaires popped in for chapters. I wrote for characters I’ve never had the opportunity to do before, and I always get excited about doing something new. Thankfully, you won’t have to wait too long to read it as it’ll be available at the end of April.

After that is a full-length novel and it’s my first MMM. I’m picky about throuples when I’m reading, so I crafted a story that I’d be satisfied with and I have adored these three guys for a long time. It was definitely a challenge, and I’m thrilled with how it came out. I know MMM is not for everyone, and I completely understand if you need to skip it.

I haven’t had another throuple show up in my head yet. As I mentioned, I want everything in an MMM to go a certain way and I certainly don’t want to re-write the same story repeatedly. That being said, I’m also not opposed to tackling another throuple. We’ll just have to see what the D’Vaires have in store for us!

When we get closer to release date for the next book, I’ll give out some hints on who it might feature, but there are a few months to go! The other thing I’ve been working on is putting the entire D’Vaire backlist into paperback. I'm up to Disregarding Fate and it should be ready in a couple of weeks. My plan is to get them all completed by the end of summer.

In the meantime, I’ll do my best to get blog posts out a bit more regularly to keep you up-to-date on what’s going on and what we have to look forward to!