General Update: August 19, 2024 (Originally Posted to Patreon)

As the headline states, this post was originally shared with my Patreon subscribers.

I attempted to time travel back to last year… and I’m not sure what I think about that, truth be told.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a general update, so here’s what’s going on in the Blain Household!

1: I’m way behind on A Light in the Dark. It was supposed to be around 100,000 words. Right now, it’s just under 140,000 words. I am not finished yet, and I might not be finished yet, which puts this book at high risk of being my third longest, unseating Null & Void. (I’m sure you’re sad.)

2: As such, I’m behind on Partner-in-Crime. The next few months of my life are going to be interesting.

3: I’m very grateful I only have about 30,000 words to write on Experimental Voyage to prepare it for publication in its standalone format. If I had much more to write than that, I would be stuck in a shit creek without a paddle or a boat. (Ew.)

4a: I have lost 5 pounds, and I’m currently working at conquering Mine Hill, which is a 1.8 mile tall hill with something like a 900 foot elevation gain. I managed to walk .9 miles of it and conquer 400 feet of elevation gain, or so says my watch. “The worst is yet to come” apparently applies with this hill.

4b: I saw people in a great deal better physical shape than me be conquered by this hill, which made me feel a bunch better about trying. However, the pair of 70-80 year olds who came down the tail end at the equivalent of a job might have lit a fire under my ass. Look, if Granny and Grandpa can do it, I can to… I just… won’t be doing it at a jog anytime soon.

The heartbreak was real, folks… utterly defeated by the brisk pace of Granny and Grandpa.

5: I have some fun projects I’m working on on the side. Some are RJ Blain titles (The Murder at River’s End is one of said titles, and I’m doing a luna moth shifter-witch for it. The cover is in the works, but I’m not quite ready to show it off yet.) I’m setting up some writing challenges for last book in series titles, so expect to see some closures coming in 2025.

6: I will be mostly unavailable in September, but I will be posting read along stuff (mostly) as normal. There may be days where you get more than one and days that are skipped. Traveling is exhausting.

7: I have been working happily on my cross-stitching! Right now, I’m taking a break from the one project and working on a heart project for anti-anxiety purposes. I’m currently 17 hours into this project, and it has been saving my sanity. Cross-stitching to help mitigate anxiety is working fabulously well. Here’s the progress photo from last night on it:

8: I will be doing a lot of “unannounced” releases next year, so be aware. I will be publishing the books after they are ready, with a 2-3 week delay to try to get print editions mostly going at the same time as the ebook editions. (Audiobooks will continue to be 6-12 months after the ebook release due to narrator availability and so on. I am not holding an ebook back by 6-12 months for the audiobook crowd, sorry but not sorry.)

9: Blood Bound (Keira Grace’s version) is currently being recorded. Cameron Hill is also busy recording something for me. I have zero updates on when these things will be ready for proofing. But there are two audiobooks in the works.

10: Last but not Leashed #2 and Serial Killer Princess #2 will be in an anthology of Mag Rom Com shorts, novellas, and maybe even a novel. The anthology will be priced at $9.99, as I will not be doing them until they’re Big Fat Books of around 200k in length. maybe longer. Please do not ask when they are happening. I do not know at this time. I haven’t been in a shorts/novella mood.

11: Pets in Space is coming again this year, and yes, I have a piece in it. It will probably be my last Pets in Space contribution, as my brain is Firmly in Novel Format and Pets in Space requires I stay below 50k to participate in the anthology. The next story I have in mind will probably be closer to 150k… (Not even sorry.) This might change if I can think of something a Little Shorter, but the reality is, my contribution to Pets in Space this year is the first half of a story, ended at a good stopping point so that it reads more like a Book One in a series than anything else… it is what it is.

12: My current priority is working on just enough money makers to keep the ship floating and spending the rest of my time working on new things and closing out old things/finishing series. (The finished series make very little money for me after they’re finished, so that’s more fun, especially with the number of people who refuse to buy series until they’re finished…) but at least they’ll be done and I won’t have to worry about them ever again.

13: My goal is to close out the Witch & Wolf series by the end of 2025; once Edge of Midnight and Dual Nature are finished, I will likely do one more Witch & Wolf themed anthology, which will finish out a few Richard/Nicolina stories I want to do and so on. I have plans to do a Dustin Walker novel or two, but they will be “post completion” stuff for fun. After Dual Nature / Edge of Midnight, I’m considering the world to be complete, and anything I do it in is strictly for my amusement.

14: Prince of New York will be the only Royal States book for 2025. While I have covers in hand for several Agents of the Royal States books, none of them are currently screaming at me, so it’s going to be a sparse year for Susan Copperfield.

15: GP Robbins will not have a 2025 release. Expect 2026 for the next book.

16: Lilith Daniels might have a 2025 release, but expect the late end of the year. Otherwise, she’ll have a 2026 release.

17: Bernadette Franklin will have a 2025 release in the form of Murder Floof. After Murder Floof, Becoming Juliette will be up next.

While I have some extra covers in hand, I may conclude the Juliette world following Becoming Juliette; I have some travel themed contemporary romances I wish to do under the same pen name with covers in hand, and I may skip over to that. (While Juliette has a small following, the Bernadette Franklin books do not really earn me money. I do them for fun, and done for fun doesn’t justify doing more than six when basically none of them have earned their keep. Sorry.)

In reality, Bernadette Franklin is a beloved failure, and while super fun… I can’t afford to take up calendar time writing these books when the pen name itself isn’t helping to pay the bills. Passion only goes so far, and six passion books without earning profit is enough. (They’ve kinda sorta paid their bills back if I ignore the taxes.)

I’ll probably do one test of the travel romance, and if it fails, too, Bernadette will likely ride off into the sunset, only to be seen as side projects that emerge from time to time. (Reality says I can’t keep all the failures.)

This is one of the realities of the publishing world that people don’t like talking about… there are valid reasons that people stop writing books under a pen name… and that reason is very often financial.

Bernadette Franklin is a fuckton of fun, but the fun doesn’t pay any bills and costs money, so the fun has to come to an end. And advertising just isn’t working on these books, even with cover changes to try to make them more appealing to the market.

My brand of humor, no sex on the page, and so on just doesn’t sell to a contemporary romance crowd that prefers raunchy sex scenes, embarrassment humor, and mandatory breakups as a trope…

And that’s okay.

I hope everyone is having an excellent August. It’s now back to work for me, as these books aren’t going to write themselves…