Unleashed: A Defiant Dragons Novel (Part 3)

Ready for part 3 of Unleashed? Make sure you read Part 1 and Part 2 before diving in!

Unleashed: A Defiant Dragons Novel (Part 2)

Ready for part 2 of Unleashed? Make sure you read Part 1 before diving in!

Unleashed: A Defiant Dragons Novel (Part 1)

Welcome to the first installment of a new experiment: releasing Unleashed in serial form. A couple reminders before we dive in:

• This is a sample chapter of my new story, which I'm releasing in draft form. The final published version may be a bit different!
• You can read this story as it goes up on:
• Patreon — read early chapters!
• Radish
• Kindle Vella
• Ko-Fi
• Your feedback is encouraged and appreciated! 💕

Embedded version not working? Click here!

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments 💕

Cover Reveal for Unleashed: A Defiant Dragons Novel

Status Update: Thanks to antivirals, I am doing much better than I expected to be at this point (hooray!). I'm still struggling with pretty bad weakness and shortness of breath, which is extremely frustrating. But I'm starting to be able to do a little work like this post (and the accompanying newsletter). 

Thanks for your understanding and support as I try to recover. 💕

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This cover design is all due to a lovely bit of luck and a wonderful designer's generosity, and I'm thrilled to finally be sharing it publicly. I've been sitting on it for over two years!

So without further ado, here is the cover for Unleashed, designed by the super talented Danielle Fine of Design by Definition Covers: 

The blurb is as rough as the manuscript, but here's a quick look at what this story is about:

Tia's been hiding among the humans for hundreds of years, and she has her system down. But when a new dragon arrives in her city, she doesn't run fast enough. Alluring as he is, the newcomer is determined to drag her back for the ritual she'd escaped.

Did she say "ritual"? Make that "fight to the death."

Azar never dreamed he'd be the one to find her: the spoiled, selfish princess who doomed all the dragons. Only it turns out the Sovereign's sister  is nothing like he was told. She's fierce, shrewd, and stunning, and she throws everything he believes into question.

The one thing Azar knows without a doubt? Bringing her home is dragonkind's only hope.

What do you think?? Let me know in the comments! 💕

Making a Major Change with Exciting News!

A version of this post went up here on my Patreon, but unlike there, this post allows public comments. So please let me know your thoughts!

As you know, this year my focus is on giving my Patreon the best possible chance of success I can manage, so that I don't have to give up writing. To that end, I've been learning from other authors in several different spaces, and naturally, I'm working on implementing their advice. It's been (and continues to be) a huge mindset shift from indie publishing, and I'm going to be making some big changes going forward. 

Some things I have already implemented, like updating tier descriptions and benefits, and even adding images: 

 

This is a cropped screen grab, but you can check out all the updated tiers here. 

As you can see, the $1 tier is now support only. That's really nerve-wracking, saying: "Support my writing for nothing extra in return."  But so many other writers have told me this is the right way to go, so I'm going to try. This tier will also get early access occasionally when all Patrons will see posts before they become public, but I haven't found a good way to say that concisely. (Suggestions welcome!) I figure people won't be complaining about getting more than they expect, right?

 

Eagle-eyed readers may also have caught something else:

💫 🐉 🌟 The Biggest Change: 🌟 🐉 💫

I will be releasing the entirely rough current draft of Unleashed (aka "The Dragon Story") on Patreon (at the Benefactor tier and higher). 

And, on a serial fiction platform (or maybe several). I haven't yet decided which other platform(s) the story will go on, which depends in part on hearing back from one to which I had to apply, where authors can get paid for their stories. Depending on if/when I hear, I may be putting it up for free elsewhere, which is frightening and very counterintuitive for me (artists deserve to be paid for their work!!!).

However, it's apparently the best possible way to get more eyes on my writing. (Sort of like putting up free content on Youtube but having a Patreon.)

The basic way this will work is that "chapters" will absolutely always go up on Patreon first, and the Patreon will always be multiple chapters ahead of what's available elsewhere (until we reach the end of the story, that is). 

I say "chapters" because these will not be like book chapters. Rather, they will likely be one or two scenes at a time, so this story in this form might end up with a hundred chapters, though the final book someday will have a more traditional chapter breakdown. 

This text will be ROUGH.  As in, rougher than even what I would normally have sent my writing group in days gone by. It is the story as it currently sits on my computer, which normally I wouldn't let anyone read (and so far haven't). The magic system isn't entirely figured out, not every character has names, and there may be massive plot holes or other embarrassing things. It will be rougher than any writing I have ever shared.

 

Apparently, this is the kind of thing readers love seeing, but it is terrifying for me. 

On the plus side, since I do have the entire draft finished, I should be able to have a reliable release schedule. I will also continue working on polishing the story when I can, so there's a chance the later chapters will be in much better shape than the early ones (hopefully). 

This also means I will be doing a cover reveal next week! I hope to release the first couple chapters on Patreon before the end of this month, and I'm currently planning to have them go public in early July—at which point they will also be available here on my blog, to allow for public commenting.

Ultimately, I hope you all see that I am working hard to try to keep doing this writing thing. And I would love to hear what you think of this plan! 💕

I want to be more

I want to be more than reality allows me to be, than my body and my health (which I for some reason still separate because the cognitive symptoms feel like they're not my "body" even if they're a physical illness impacting my mind) leave space for me to be.

I want my books to be read by thousands, and my stories to impact lives. But I also want to leave my bedroom more than I do. To bake, or paint, or pick up the violin again. To have the energy to devour a book a day rather than one book painstakingly in the last 14 weeks (yes, really).

Sometimes my life feels like this, but not at all in a fun way:

Whether with publishing or with life, I keep trying to be more, but I'm trapped by my reality that keeps me chained and swinging ever farther from my goals the harder I try to reach them. 

Part of it is a twisted desire to live up to the "potential" people used to see in me. To be the person I was "meant" to be before ME/CFS stole that self from me. 

Part of it is simply wanting to have the freedom of choice, for the smallest things not to take so much fight. For my contribution to life to be significant (and hopefully positive), and my silence/absence noticed, to be felt. In some sense, I suppose it's profoundly human to want to have an impact. 

But the funny thing is, before my illness, I never wanted to have some massive impact on the world at large. That was never my goal or priority for myself. 

I wanted to have a good impact on the people in my life, on the community I belonged to or would build for myself. To focus on the kind of small positive influence that actually affects our individual daily lives, rather than anything paradigm-shifting that would change the world. 

It's somewhat inevitable that I lost sight of that with my writing, or more specifically with publishing. The "success" of a story is measured by the number of people who read it, or the number who buy it (and yes, those numbers are always vastly different). And I think I will always want my books to find their audience, the people who will enjoy and appreciate and even possibly be transformed by my stories. After all, the stories are meaningful to me and take an extraordinary amount of time and work and energy. 

But I've also realized I need to accept being less. To focus on the individuals rather than the more abstract "audience." 

All I have to offer is what I am, and what my stories—if I manage to keep writing them—have to say. I don't know how to be more, especially in the context of our social media–centric world. And because reality is what it is, and my ill health dominates all, I am going to stop trying to be more. 

Instead I'm going to try to focus on being enough, on connecting with the individuals to whom my writing matters. 

Practically speaking, within the context of my writing, it means that the writing comes first. The Patreon comes second. And everything else, not at all (though public posts will continue to be shared on this blog to allow public commenting!). Even keeping up with those things sounds daunting enough. 

I have set a new goal in the Patreon, focused on the number of Patrons rather than a certain dollar amount. My aim is to get there by the end of 2022. I'll reevaluate then, but I don't want to be misleading. Right now, I think if I don't hit that number by the end of this year, I'll be calling it a day (or really, a decade) with my writing. 

As always, thank you to those of you who already support my writing and have become Patrons. No matter what happens over the rest of this year, I really appreciate your steadfast faith and encouragement. 💕