 It's finally happened! A year after publishing Thorn's Dove, I've finally attained my first orange tag!!
It's all thanks to Stuff Your E-Reader Day over at romancebookworms.com if I'm honest. I joined a few weeks ago, and knew that it would be beneficial. I only thought that I'd give away a few thousand copies. Ding Dong I was WRONG! It's recommended we run our freebie of our book for 3 days since there's all the time zone issues. The third day has just started and I'm currently sitting at 12.5k COPIES CLAIMED!! I'm BLOWN AWAY by folks' interest, the popularity of Stuff Your E-Reader Day, and how quickly it would skyrocket Thorn's Dove to ANY top 5 spot, let alone #1! I'm grateful beyond expression and I really hope readers enjoy Thorn and Ruth's story and continue with the series! And I can now claim that I am an Amazon best-selling author! *weeps tears of opossum trash cat joy*
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 Agnarr's Teacher: Abandoned on Niflheim 1 by Jenifer WoodMy rating: 5 of 5 stars Am I biased? Absa-feckin'-lutely. Her anxiety rep is so on point. As someone who struggles with anxiety, I felt seen as I read it. As she developed Piper's character, she built on relatable experiences and showed how Agnarr never shamed her for it, just patiently accepted the parts of her that so many humans had shunned. Something I know that so many of us long for in a partner. To be seen. To be understood. The world building is so fun! The side characters are engaging and have their own vibrant personalities. There's some action, but the story is one of finding your fated mate while on an adventure. It is cozy, it is low-stakes and low-angst. And most importantly? High HEAT! We love spice in this house and Jenifer delivers! There are so many little hilarious moments throughout the book that really speak to Jenifer's sense of humor. I'm so excited to see where she takes this series and what other rep she's got planned! To see who's next of the humans and the orcs to get their forever mate! As her friend, one of her developmental editors, and illustrator, I have had the immense privilege of getting to follow Jenifer's writing story from the beginning, culminating in Agnarr's Teacher. I know the care and love that she put into writing this story and to me it has made reading it all the sweeter for me. So yes, I am totally biased. But also? The book is incredibly well written and I'm too autistic not to be objective about it. So yes, if you like low-angst, high-steam cozy monster romance with excellent anxiety rep and a cinnamon roll hero who is just THE BEST, then Agnarr's Teacher needs to be on your TBR! View all my reviews
I've mentioned this story in passing on and off for the last few months. I'd originally written Flower from the Flame as the novel Thistledown (Haegtesse Book 1) under a different pen name almost a decade ago. I originally did it as part of NaNoWriMo, too. I'd self published it, but I didn't know what I was doing and it flopped. Mostly because I was too damned shy about it to network and promote it. So now, I'm re-writing it. Giving it my current voice, cleaning it up, and adding an MMC POV. This was a story I wrote when I needed it. And in some way, I think I need it again. Because it's a story about coming into one's own. And I feel like I am racing for that cusp. The FMC, Thistle, is autistic. I discovered I'm autistic last year and it's completely changed my life. Re-reading Thistledown, HOW did no one put 2 and 2 together to realize I was autistic? I wrote her as autistic without even knowing it back then. Now I'm just putting a name to it.  At one point, I was planning on turning Thistledown into a comic. This is one of the panels with Mrs. McCreedy on it. I based Mrs. McCreedy off of my Grammie Kay who passed away. She'd be almost 105 if she were still alive today. I miss her a lot and she's the person I dedicated the book to. I like to think she'd get such a kick out of the fact I'm writing monster smut now lol. So, that's a lot of the past stuff. What about now? Well, that's relatively easy to be honest. As I re-write Thistledown to Flower from the Flame, I'll be posting it on Kindle Vella. Right now, I'm breaking up chapters into more uniformed lengths for serialization. I've re-read and updated the first two chapters. The first one is already live and the second I submitted today. If you're expecting rhyme or reason to how I post on KV then you are going to be SORELY mistaken. I do my trash cat best but the whims of creativity and neurospicy demand payment constantly so who knows. I am hoping that since the chapters will be shorter, I'll be able to turn out one a week. But again...  This here is the eternal vibe. So precisely how much content do I have?? Bold of you to assume I can quantify that for you. But! What I can tell you is that the word count currently sits at 81k. The second book in the trilogy (Yes, it was originally a trilogy!) was a little under halfway done at roughly 30k. And then just some brainstormed notes for the third book which is negligible at this point given that I'm probably going to change stuff. Let's just say I beef up Flower from the Flame to 96k for it to be finished, yeah? (This is likely given I'm adding the MMC POV and more plot elements) I'm planning on making each KV episode 2-3k long. Which gives us 32- 48 episodes, depending. I haven't actually decided yet whether or not I'll split up each book on KV to be separate books or just keep it as one long ass story until it's done, then split it and publish it as 3 separate books on KU. I should also probably note that none of this is finalized editing wise when I post it via KV. It's roughly edited, but not gone through with a fine-tooth comb. So you WILL find errors. If you would like to support the story and watch it grow, you can always follow, read, and comment via Kindle Vella! (Click the top graphics or the kindle vella graphic to be redirected!)  To say the last few months have been hectic would be an understatement. I've kept myself very busy. Probably too busy. Busy enough that I'm worrying some people.  My friends, family, and writing buddies currently... But all I do is art and writing so... I just wake up and get to it. Take naps when I need. Eat when I need. My "fun" activities are also my "work" activities so... lol. But I'm mostly a hermit these days. Being chronically ill means that going out often during a pandemic is a bad idea. I've already had COVID twice, first time wasn't so bad back when the pandemic started. But this last time? My fever got bad enough I could feel my grey matter cooking. Who knows, maybe all that fever brain boiling made me no longer give much of a fuck. So. I just ran the Monster-Load Giveaway with 100 participating authors with the help of Vera Valentine, Latrexa Nova and the Smut Tea Stories Podcast team. (UM DREAM TEAM ANYONE??) And currently, we're (or more accurately, I'm) getting everything set up for a follow up event. The goal of these things is to uplift the author community. And so far? It's been successful. Stressful and successful! We even managed to break King Sumo. Like... they'd have to re-write the code because we exhausted their (UNMENTIONED) limitations which in turn strained their bandwidth. But being an ex Format QA Tester at Sony... Yeah, too bad tech bros.  Me to our team when I explained how King Sumo wanted us to do LESS... What's been trippy AF hasn't just been the fact that big names in the monster/alien romance genres know who the fuck I am (help! I have been perceived!), but they've been "drooling over my artwork" (...their words...) which just has me going...  I'm currently doing a bunch of art commissions, am now in two anthologies (as far as I'm aware), have one book that's half done in Orc Matched, an Orc Matched holiday special plotted, two more Orc Matched books plotted, two potential novella series I could start this year, one witchy trilogy that's half either written or plotted, the first book in a trilogy that's part of a multi-series mostly written, and... well yeah, there's more but I just tired out my brain lol. ESSENTIALLY... my word for 2023, "AUDACITY", has really just shot for the moon at this point. I am, in my purest form, haunted by a feral, unhinged trash cat opossum who's loitering next to a dumpster fire at the back of a Waffle House during a full moon, writing and drawing alien/monster porn and serenading the moon with a half-full box of mushroom and pineapple pizza. I don't have a plan other than "why the fuck not?" and am just flying by the seat of my pants with my critter coven, cringe fully embraced. But so far so good? I also don't have a plan for this whole blog thing, so let's just see where this goes, yeah?  |
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