I hit the button

I have hit the button on Amazon.com to publish Night Finds. It takes up to 12 hours to appear on the U.S. site and up to 24 to show up elsewhere. So hopefully it shows up eventually tomorrow. Work and home life are super busy right now, but I am hoping to get a good jump on Night Rises over the long weekend. I am thinking about changing the covers over to the new models come Monday, at least for a couple of weeks. Meaning the one that looks like this:


Will magically change into this for a while, possibly forever:


That's it for now. Time for bed. A night of editing makes me sleepy.

The excerpt of Night Finds I promised

The day is getting away from me and this afternoon is going to be spent away from the computer, so I better post this now. Here is the first five chapters of Night Finds. Keep in mind that I have done the initial edit, but no proofreading yet, so there is most certainly going to be typos here and there. It may also leave you foaming at the mouth to get read the rest of it. I should be all done with the fixes and have it published by the 24th. At least that is the goal. Link to excerpt on scribd.

THE END

Boy am I happy to see those words. I do believe that the initial write out of Night Finds is finally done. With all of my home projects and work projects butting in the last month, it has taken a little longer than I usually like to take on that first draft. My two week max normal went about an extra week. I also didn't write the end early on for this one and that may have made things drag a little for me. I really like having an end point to head towards. Good thing I have the next book's end already written.

Another first for this series, it is an even book in the series and Sebastian doesn't have any negative mojo going on at all at the end of it. It is actually quite the opposite and I would almost call it a happy ending. For those out there that know me, that is probably a pretty scary statement. Happy endings for me could very well be Night Owl City blowing up. Since only about five seconds of this book takes place in Night Owl City, I think it is a safe to say that isn't the case.

Anyway, it is on to my initial edit and then many, many proofreading sessions. I will probably post the first five chapters after a couple of those proofreading sessions, like I did for Night Lurks. I don't know if anyone likes to read that kind of thing, but I like hitting buttons, so I will do it anyway. I would post some of my favorite lines now, but only about 15 people have probably read Night Lurks and the lines would most likely give away the other book's ending.

Brrrrr

Yesterday at this time I was out sitting on my deck enjoying temperatures around 80 degrees Fahrenheit trying to get some writing in. Today I am huddled under blankets because of a wind chill around 35. Iowa weather is crazy like that, but I really prefer the warmer temperatures. My brain doesn't want to function as much in the cold.

I am down to about six chapters left in Night Finds and I am hoping my brain defrosts enough to get one or two chapters in today. In other book news, I think I am going to unpublish the first Nyx Slaughter book from the Smashwords site so I can do some exclusive marketing on Amazon. I am pretty sure I will be hitting the button tomorrow night, but I wanted to post something to let people know it didn't just disappear. I hear good and bad things about joining KDP Select and since I am still trying to grow a following, I figured I might as well try it.

In non-book news, tomorrow is my ninth wedding anniversary and I got a bathroom remodel as a present. I am one of those weird women that doesn't like jewelry and absolutely hates chocolate, so it is a great gift. Of course, my husband got the same present, but he may also have a special dinner in his future.

Finally a synopsis for Night Finds

Since Night Lurks has been out for a whole three days, I know everyone has been dying to find out what the next book will be about. I am over halfway done with it now so I feel confidant that I won't decide to make it about something completely different. Here is the idea (I don't think it really spoils the big reveals that take place in Night Lurks):

Meeting my mom did not go exactly as I had always envisioned it, but at least I wasn't sent on a mission to kill her. I still think the world may be a better place if that was a possibility though. It has been a couple of weeks since that great day and my life is moving forward at the speed of light.

Plans are being made to welcome another new family member and that necessitates a change of venue from my cherished penthouse apartment. I knew it was coming, but I tried to avoid it for as long as possible. It is a good thing I don't totally hate the new place.

I only have a chance to spend one night before I receive a call from my father, the non-biological one. It turns out the Collective hasn't given up on me, yet, and they think kidnapping my real father is the way to win my heart. They are hilarious.

The gang and I have to rush to the rescue. With the new family member making my life just a little bit difficult, I have to rely heavily on my family and friends. It turns out there are some people I didn't know belonged in either one of those categories, but it nice to have them along.

Things are still progressing as planned, which leads me to believe this installment will be ready by the end of May. I won't give an exact date, just yet, because I tend to try to hurry things along when I have deadlines.

Night Lurks is up now on Amazon

I got everything together last night so I could submit Night Lurks to Amazon last night and it looks like it is up now. Hurray! I believe this is the link to check it out. Like the other books in the series it is currently 99 cents. I am still trying to determine where the right price point will end up being for the books. Once I have them all written, I will think more about marketing and pricing and such. Right now, I just want to get my thoughts all down and get some feedback on whether the world thinks those thoughts are crazy.

I had to spend some time with book five over the last couple of days, so I didn't spend as much time with Night Finds as I would have liked. It is over halfway done and will probably take another week instead of being done this week like I hoped. Anyway I look at it, I am ahead of schedule because I started writing before I finished editing the last book.

Also, just as a note, this weekend I am going to be playing with the design of this site. If you see anything crazy looking, it is just me working and hopefully it will fix itself by the time I am done.

Oh, and for those of you who don't have a Kindle or the Kindle app, I did post Night Lurks on smashwords while I was typing this post. I wasn't going to originally, but I know not everyone can view a mobi file.

Sophia it is

I originally was hoping one of the, I don't know, younger names would get the nod, but after seeing someone vote for Sophia, I think it will be the right choice. I know that the person who voted for it knows who the name is for because she has already read Night Lurks. Being one of my beta readers has those kind of perks. They get to know just how far I jumped off the deep end before I am even ready to admit it.

I won't lie, before I sent it on to the beloved betas, I was really worried where the last chapter went. I couldn't help it though. Things just fell into place and helped prepare everything for the last two books. I am told that it isn't something anyone would see coming.

Since I was waiting to know the new character's name, I was a bit limited on how far I could go in starting Night Finds, said character is mentioned really early on. Now, I am able to really focus in on getting it written. With a few hours of writing yet to go tonight, I am at around 15,000 words. I am hoping I can get a few more thousand in, which should take me to about a third of the way to my goal.

There was a little while where I was dragging a bit, but I worked through that point and in the process found a twist that I didn't see coming. I really do hate when characters sneak those in. I am still laughing about how funny it is in my mind.

Well, I need to get back to the drawing board. It is less than a week until Night Lurks is out there for all to read. I am expecting Night Finds to take another week and a half to get to the point where I am ready to edit. I really hope it is only a week, but real life does tend to happen sometimes and I have a lot of projects going on around the house.

To kill a character or not?

I have been debating killing off one of the characters close to Nyx for the past couple of weeks. I played different scenarios out in my head for killing off just about every character other than Alex and Sebastian. Oh and Clyde. I couldn't live with myself if I killed Clyde off. Other than those three, no one was safe in my mind.

In the end, I had an epiphany this morning on how to end the series, which is where I was considering adding a death, and typed out that last 3,000 words chapter. I have a place to end now and it feels really good. None of the characters are really safe, in fact safe would be the last word I use to describe what ends up happening. I won't lie; there may have been tears threatening as I wrote it.

The fifth book is pretty much all set. I will go through and do a final read a week from Friday and then go ahead and publish it. This is the book that really sets up the last parts of the story. In it we finally find out just what Nyx is and we get the unpleasant gift of meeting her mother. I am glad that secret will finally be out.

While I am waiting to publish that book, I have started in on the sixth one. So far, the cover and about half of the first chapter is complete. I haven't wanted to get too far yet because I am waiting to decide on a key character's name until the poll I posted over the weekend is complete. I plan to close the poll end of day on Friday and I have posted the poll again down below in case anyone wants to add their two cents on a name. If there is a tie, I will go with the name that is first in the list.

Time to get back to work writing and piecing together a synopsis for Night Finds. Happy reading.

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