Summer is Coming and the Writing is Never Easy

June 4th, 2023

Happy June to everyone! It’s true writing is never easy, but I am writing!

Bound in Smoke is (dare I say it?) structurally complete. For quite some time I had chapters that were dangling out there not fully belonging. I wasn’t looking at them much because I was addressing other issues and writing new chapters. Now, however, those chapters are no longer waiting around. Only one chapter needed to be deleted and by “deleted” I mean moved to the “Save This Just in Case” folder. I found the right place for the plot line in those chapoters and now they are pulling their weight for plot and character. They need some revision to fit in their new home, but it’s really satisfying to make that happen.

Right now, the manuscript is around 93K words. That count is going to fluctuate for a while, but at this point, it’s not really about new words, it’s about polishing, shaping, and making the characters and their story come alive.

How’s things going for everyone?

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May Greetings! The WIP and a New Cover

May 6th, 2023

The WIP

Bound in Smoke continues to go really well. The paper read-through was productive up to the point where I stopped editing to deal with the changes that resulted. Those needed to be in before I pick up with the back half of the story, so there was no point going farther with the read through. This is totally normal for me, by the way. To give a flavor of the changes that resulted, I added two new chapters to the beginning.

I was at the 83K word mark when I started the read-through, and with all the deletions, additions, and two new chapters, I’m now at 90K so a significant net gain! I do expect a chapter or two at the back end will get chopped when I get there, but everything is lining up. I love this story more and more every time and I’m getting excited about its release.

New Cover for Scandal

In other book news, Scandal has a new cover. Alas, I cannot use the cover I love, love, love because Amazon rejects that cover for advertising. Despite all the other historical romance covers that are way racier than that one, they have refused to budge on that issue. My initial replacement cover just wasn’t doing the job, so I commissioned this one in the hope that Amazon will allow me to market this one. It’s been uploaded to all the various vendors so if you’re interested, you should be able to update your version on most devices.

A young woman from the back in a white Regency gown with blue ribbon trimming gazing at a castle.

Cover of Scandal

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Shame on Scholastic Books

April 15th, 2023

Scholastic: Money before Honor

Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall wrote a Children’s picture book titled Love In the Library, a story based on her grandparents and the US internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. The book is published by Candlewick Press. Scholastic inquired about licensing the book for distribution in their channels, but the offer was contingent on Tokuda-Hall agreeing to remove references to racism. I urge you to read her blog post about the offer from Scholastic and the reasons she refused a dream contract. To the detriment of her career, by the way.

Publishers talk a big game about how they publish works that contain ideas some might disagree with or that challenge entrenched views. They talk about wanting to do better publishing for diverse readers and acquiring diverse voices. Scholastic makes a mockery of those professed ideals by caving in to people who want books to reflect their narrow, bigoted, racist, and hateful views.

Those who crow about Freedom aren’t asking schools to prevent their children from reading certain books. They don’t want any child reading books they don’t like, no matter the opinions of other parents. It’s their choice for everyone. They started with schools, and now they’re working on public libraries. Book sellers are next, online and brick and mortar.

Shame on Scholastic

Their cowardice is just one of many reasons that the consolidation of traditional publishers is bad for readers and authors alike. There’s no one else who competes in the Scholastic space and therefore no one else who could grow a spine and stand up to the voices of hate. They want to talk about how wonderful they are for putting books into the hands of children, but apparently only if those books have been sanitized enough to cater to the racists and homophobes.

Here’s where to contact Scholastic and let them know what you think.

Love in the Libary

Links to buy Love in the Library can be found at the author’s website. Hopefully most library readers can find the book at their local library.

Updated to add subsequent Scholastic spin: via NPR

Make no mistake. This isn’t a one-off situation, and chances are white authors are not hearing about the reality of non-white, cis authors. It’s critically important for people like me (white, straight, cis-gender) to understand that not hearing from the marginalized about the impact on them in no way means it isn’t happening. It is.

My DMs have been absolutely full,” [Tokuda-Hall] said. “People sharing pretty horrific stories that they’re just too afraid to share in public.”

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Spring is Springing!

April 10th, 2023

Greetings everyone! This was a week of spectacular weather after a couple of days of light rain. A few of the many wildflowers I planted are coming up so fingers crossed that continues. Everything is starting to bloom! Yay for April and spring weather.

Yesterday I took the dogs for their walk and it was too hot for me. As we move out of our wild winter weather, no more sneaking in early walks for the dogs. Walks have to for wait when it’s cooler. I have a plant identification app now and I’m having fun identifying some of the weeds, wildflowers, and grasses, but sad that so much is considered invasive or else non-native. As we work on our slow conversion of our immediate yard with natives and pollinators I will have to figure out a strategy for getting rid of the invasive grasses . . .

I am still working through my read through of Bound in Smoke, and it’s still going well. In fact, I’m pleasantly surprised that I haven’t reached a spot (yet) that requires that I do an update and rewrite so I can start over with the read through. I’m interspersing the editing with note-booking some story and character questions which always brings needed clarity.

Apropos of nothing, one of the goldfish in the pond is jet black with two bright orange stripes along its head that look like horns. I’m going to try to get a picture because it’s really really striking. Stay tuned.

I hope everyone is doing well and that there are spring flowers for you to admire and enjoy.

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A Wednesday Post About Weather and Writing

March 22nd, 2023

Weather: We Have It.

Greetings to everyone! California has been in severe drought for the last several years which has been scary and sad. We’d stopped planting our yearly tulips because even with a six week rest in the fridge before planting they require February frost and freezes, and for the past 2-3 years we were getting spring in February and it was making the tulips mostly not come up. In hindsight I wish I’d bought tulips this year, because we had the kind of cold that makes the tulips thrive. In 2022 and so far in 2023, my part of California has been hit by constant stream of wild weather; high winds, atmospheric rivers, snow that stayed on the mountains nearly five days, plus hail multiple times. Snow is a once a decade thing here and hail is almost as rare. All the trees are stressed from drought, and, also in hindsight, I wish I’d been even more aggressive about taking out trees along the driveway. Without that preventive work though there would have been serious damage. All told we lost or had to take out 10 trees either because  they fell or became a hazard. Elsewhere on the property we lost a 60+ year old oak when the water in the creek washed out its roots. Three other trees came down in later storms. I had to construct berms and troughs to direct water away from the sole driveway drainage because the neighbors below us discovered some major drainage problems which they can’t fix until it’s drier and the water from that drain was shooting up into the air from a broken pipe on their side . . .

The good news is none of the falling trees blocked us in (because we’d already taken those trees out) and the tree guys were able to mostly straighten the crushed fence. We had cows visiting from the neighbor above us because they’d learned about jumping over crushed fences and after making that discovery I believe they went looking for all the places they could go eat someone else’s grass — which is waist high in places! So we got that bit of fence sorted too and have not had more cow visitors.

Writing!

Bound in Smoke is going well. Getting My Wicked Enemy and My Forbidden Desire on sale took some time but fortunately I was ready so that went relatively smoothly. Then I reached the point where I wanted to do a paper read through of Bound in Smoke and it turned out HP has basically borked my model of printer [insert angry ragey emojis here] with a driver system that refuses to recognize the printer even though MacOS says it’s right there and by the end of trying to get it to work, I reached a place of white hot hatred for HP so I bought a new printer and it is NOT an HP printer. The new printer arrived and was easy to set up. So, I don’t write in Word but in order to print a book, I port my book to Word so I can set up everything (almost) the way I like for a read-through and then it turned out the Word print dialog box does not have the check box for 2-sided printing and there was no way to make it stop printing 2-sided — because someone somewhere decided the printer should print 2-sided by default and there is no way to change that at the printer. I need the back of pages blank because I use the back of the page when I run out of space for editorial changes on the front. OMG.

Anyway eventually I opened the Word doc in Pages and when I clicked print, there was the box that let me un-click 2-sided printing. And so, after more frustration than seems fair, I have the MS printed out and I am doing my read-through. So far, I’m pretty happy with how it reads. I like the new printer and it’s not an HP. I also have a new shredder.

There is more rain headed our way. I like winter weather, I really do, but I’m going to whine and just say, I could do with a break.

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They’re On Sale Now!

March 9th, 2023

My Wicked Enemy and My Forbidden Desire

Are on sale everywhere! I am so, so happy this day has finally come. For a limited time, both books are $0.99. On April 15th the price for My Forbidden Desire goes up. All the books have been updated in line with the editorial changes I made in these two books. The changes aren’t massive, but if you have any of the other books, you might want to update your file.

Cover of My Wicked Enemy. Features a handsome sexy shirtless man looking right into your heart. Background is glowy purple.

Cover of My Wicked Enemy

A demon warlord’s sworn enemy is the woman he desires more than anything in the world.

Carson Philips flees an abusive home only to encounter a man who claims he’s the demon Nikodemus, and she’s a witch who murders his kind. With deadly enemies of untold power in pursuit of her, Nikodemus may be her only hope for survival. Proving she’s not his enemy leads them to an intimacy so dangerous more than their hearts are at risk. She’s willing to follow where desire takes them, but is he?

Kill the witch and get on with his life. What could be simpler?

Nikodemus craves revenge on the magic users who enslave his people. The witch Carson Philips is just the first step toward the revenge he craves. But she’s not what he thinks and the longer he’s with her, the more entangled their hearts and their futures become. His people need his power to protect them, but if they won’t accept a warlord whose lover is a witch, will he lose her forever?

Read Chapter 1

 

Where to get My Wicked Enemy

Smashwords | Amazon | Apple Books | Barnes&Noble | Kobo | Google Play | Print

Second Edition, cJewel Books.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937823-19-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-937823-20-7

My Forbidden Desire

When hatred turns into forbidden desire…

A witch and a demon must trust the passion that binds them or risk annihilation.

A fierce and deadly demon, Xia isn’t happy when he’s ordered to protect a friend’s sister. He knows he’s perfect for a simple assignment that won’t take long. But dangerous forces are aligned against her, and they’re soon on the run from foes determined to see her dead. Before long, his fate and his heart are forever entwined with a woman who turns out to be the one thing he hates most in the world: a witch.

…who dares take the first step into dark passion?

Alexandrine Marit doesn’t believe she needs a bodyguard until the demons break in. If it weren’t for the gorgeous and very unpleasant Xia she’d be dead. As she fights to stay alive, she gives more than her heart to the demon who hates her.

Can they trust their hearts or will their enemies keep them forever apart?

Read Chapter 1

cJewel Books Second Edition.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937823-66-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-937823-67-2

Where to Get My Forbidden Desire

Smashwords | Kindle | Apple Books | Kobo | Google | Nook | Print

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Quick My Immortals Update

March 5th, 2023

My Immortals Update!

I have uploaded the files for My Wicked Enemy and My Forbidden Desire, and I am waiting for the various vendors to get the books on sale. Amazon has my reversion letters but how soon they’ll realize that and put the books on sale is anyone’s guess. Once all the vendors have published the books, I can post the various buy-links.

Pricing

For 30 days both books will be $0.99 US and whatever the closest currency conversion + VAT is in other countries. My Wicked Enemy will probably stay at that price, but the price of My Forbidden Desire will go up. If you bought these books from the original publisher, there’s no simple way to get the updated versions without buying the books again, hence the low price. However, I will likely set up a way for people who already bought these books way back when to get the new versions. Stay tuned for that.

 

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Good News!

March 2nd, 2023

As many of you know, I have been impatiently waiting for the official reversion for My Forbidden Desire.  Well, today my wonderful agent forwarded it to me which means that I now officially control all the books in the My Immortals series! Yippeee!!!

I have started the uploading process but it will be a few days before I can pull the trigger and upload everywhere. I have to contact Amazon because for whatever reason, I can’t connect all the books as a series, so they will have to fix that. At the same time I do that I will cleverly send them the reversions for My Wicked Enemy and My Forbidden Desire, and then all the ducks should be in a row.

Celebrate with me!

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February News

February 5th, 2023

Happy 2023: No Unicorns

I hope everyone is having a lovely, safe, and healthy 2023. Here at Jewel HQ we’re doing OK. It rained yesterday but no atmospheric rivers. We had some visiting cows from the neighbor but I got that sorted. I am disappointed that the mysterious hoof prints we found were left by cows not unicorns. Normally, you’d be able to tell straight away but the ground is so wet that their feet sink 3-4 inches deep in places so you can’t see the cloven part. I was hoping it was unicorns. Alas.

Reversion?

Nope. I still do not have a reversion for My Forbidden Desire. There’s really nothing I can do but continue to wait and hope my agent can sweet talk them into sending it. The eBook is no longer for sale on Amazon so I keep hoping this means they’ll send the reversion but no luck so far.

The WIP

Bound in Smoke is going really, really well. At long last I don’t feel like I’m fighting the words. It’s such a relief. See below

Sleep and Sleep Deprivation

Many years ago when my son was a toddler, I had a horrific commute that meant–no lie–I went to bed at 11:00PM or 12:00 and was up at 2:30AM. Eventually I moved on to a job without the commute and with a 6 week break between jobs. For that six weeks I did nothing but sleep late, get up, take a nap or two, and go to bed. Then all of a sudden it was like a switch flipped in my head and the world was different. I realized it was because I wasn’t exhausted anymore. Sleep deprivation is pernicious. You think you’re fine, just tired, but you’re not.

Fast forward several years to about 2019ish when I started struggling with the writing. There were a lot of reasons. Stress, caring for ill-family, unexpected and tragic deaths of people who were too young to die but did. No surprise, I was also not sleeping well. For a year after my mom passed away, the slightest sound at night would bring me wide awake in case my my mother had fallen again. She used to wander at night or fall out of bed, or she was having night terrors and needed calming. The sleep troubles continued, waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back to sleep for 2-3 hours. But I thought I was OK. I really did.

About nine-months ago or so, I decided to do something about my sleep issues. Since I get up on my dad’s schedule, I’m up at 5:00 AM every day. I started going to bed at 6:30 or 7:00 PM so I’d have time to read or what have you before I really had to sleep in order to get at least 8 hours, if not 9 hours. But the deal was, the minute my eyes started drooping, all devices went off and it was lights out no matter what time it was.

And I started sleeping through the night. No more waking up in the middle of the night unable to fall back asleep–or only very rarely. After a bit, the writing was less of a struggle. Then two or three months ago, I had that same sensation that a switch had flipped in my head and the world was different. And the writing came back completely. The way I plot and how ideas happen in the writing, all of it back.

I’m sure it was a combination of things, working through grief, recovering from a long period of sleep disturbed by my ill mother, working on stress management, but it was getting 7-9 hours of regular, uninterrupted sleep that was the major breakthrough.

What a relief.

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January News

January 14th, 2023

Carolyn Jewel: Water Engineer?

I live in Northern California which is currently being hit by a series of atmospheric rivers and high winds. So far we have some downed trees, but no damage that needs to be addressed on an emergency basis. Most of the back roads are closed due to flooding, so going anywhere means taking the long way. We haven’t lost any power here, but it’s really, really, really wet. I’ve had to dig some trenches to divert water off the driveway into the field and away from the neighbors below us.

Alas, I don’t think I could have had a career as a water engineer. One of my trenches forged its own U-turn channel right back onto the driveway! Talk about humiliating. Sheesh! I extended the trench and that seems to have solved the issue.

Reversions

Still waiting, but we’re getting close. I have been in contact with my agent and she is monitoring this for me. I did notice that the eBook for My Forbidden Desire has been taken down from Amazon, so I am hopeful they’ve processed the reversion and I will have it in hand shortly. Fingers crossed!

Bound In Smoke

The manuscript has passed the 70K word mark which is typically the stage where the story is done. The rest of the words come from polishing and fixing. So, that’s good news!

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