I get a weird thrill out of making checklists.

I'm looking into getting help for it.  Things I need to get done:

1) The Siren cover.  Sweet Christ, I'm starting to feel like I need to hang up a sign stating "Free Punches" to cover every time I mention it without, you know, accomplishing it.

2) The Bonnie&J novella.  It really has no other plot thus far than "Bonnie and J have hijinks."  I consider this to be a solid life-plan.

3) Resume editing on Sea Change.

4) Resume writing on the (side) side as Smutty Alter Ego.  I miss her.

5) Bulletproof.

6) Clean this damned house before it locks its own door and swallows me absorbs me like an amoeba feeding.  What?  It's not always about the books.

All over but the screaming.

At long last, Siren is edited and ready to go; the only thing it lacks is a cover.  We were going to do that this weekend, but the storm from hell hit Thursday night and basically shut the entire city down.  Plus some hairy personal shit went down in the life I have when I'm not attached to my computer.  (Because you totally want to be yanking yourself up from shooting directly into another screaming depression when you have nothing to do but look at your own walls!)  It's probably not a good idea to explain to two small children that you killed their mother right before Christmas, so we're going to try again next weekend.

In the meantime, would anyone be interested in a free ARC of Siren?  I love throwing glitter.

Yeah, I done did it.

I...don't like to advertise myself a lot or state things I feel should be a moo-duh moment like I'm a prophet.  (Superheroes can be POC!  They can be queer!  They can be women!  They can even be women that don't fit your beauty demands!)  This probably explains part of my sales, but something I absolutely strive for with the Super series is empowered women.  Part of that means that I pay attention to conventional beauty standards and keep them in mind as I'm drafting.  If anything, I tend to mark my female characters by what would be considered "flaws."  J has a broad jaw, Mindy is short and compact, Bonnie is a baby giraffe.  If you find them lovely, it's because they do lovable things. I *do* try to emphasize, however, that each of my five characters are athletes, and athletes freaking eat.

Dear Media: stop trying to make even "perfect" women feel like shit in order to sell more shit.

Five minutes of what the media actually does to women.

REVIEW: The Darkest Gate by SM Reine

Description: When Elise Kavanagh retired from demon hunting, she swore it would be permanent. But an attack from a powerful necromancer forced her back into the business, and now she's trying to balance her normal boyfriend and normal job with everything supernatural.

Mr. Black is a demon hunter gone rogue. He's enslaving angels and stealing ethereal artifacts in pursuit of forbidden immortality. An old grudge drives him to make his final stand in Elise's territory. Destroying her life and killing her friends isn't the goal, but it's a definite perk.

A demonic overlord offers to join against Mr. Black and protect Elise's loved ones. All she needs to do is ally with the demons she's sworn to kill, at the cost of her morals--and maybe her immortal soul. But once she crosses that line, there's no turning back.

Nothing is sacred when Heaven and Hell collide on Earth...

My Thoughts: One of the things I enjoy most about Reine's Elise is how likably unlikable she is.  Someone as traumatized as Elise isn't going to flop and angst, because they're not going to understand that they're traumatized.  The Darkest Gate begins where Death's Hand left off in exploring more fully this strange, dangerous woman.  The flashbacks are fantastic both in bringing the plot into focus without need of a full-fledged prequel and in showing that Elise is, if anything, in pretty good shape compared to her teenaged self.  Elise and her aspis, James, are at an inevitable crossroads: he wants a normal life.  She knows she can never have one, and James is the only person she truly allows herself to trust.  She's struggling to play nice in her own not-quite-nice way; as sweet as Anthony is, it's clear that it's not going to work.  Featuring at least one Joss Whedon screamer moment.

Siren: first three chapters!

Yep, failed NaNoWriMo miserably.  This is why you back your stuff up, kiddos.  (I assume children are the only ones who don't know this rule yet.)  Well, at least I'm enjoying Bonnie, and I do have some good news: I'm shooting the Siren cover next weekend!  The model will be the fabulous, the wonderful, the glamorous Mandalorian Maven, perhaps recognizable as the same model who brought J to life on the Fire With Fire cover.  She's chameleon enough to pull it off.  In the meantime, here's Naomi: