?New Demon Bonded Scenes To Read?

Hey, babes!

So, some cool shit. You can read the first 2 scenes of Demon Bonded: Episode #12 up on the free part of the website. That page will be updated every time more of the story is, so feel free to check in whenever.

Wendy has a new book out, just released, that’s looking damn cool. It’s in KU for all you peeps who enjoy that program during these tough times. Check it.

Omega Chattel

At Zilly’s Chattel Farm, Alli is seen as an upstart Omega. But in reality, he is the victim of a brutal house-dad who wants to control him. Threatened with being institutionalized when he turns eighteen, Alli runs away.

Tarin is an Alpha who runs a small school from his own home for wayward Omegas. Three or four students at a time are all he can handle and his home is full. But when he meets Alli on the streets, he is compelled to bring him home.

Alli wants a better future for himself, better than selling himself on the streets, so he agrees to be a student, when what he really wants is Tarin himself. Tarin doesn’t sleep with his Omega students, and the one exception he made broke his heart.

But Alli is persistent. And not only does Tarin have a weakness for broken young men, there seems to be a spontaneous bond forming between them. The combination is turning hotter faster than they can keep up.

Non-shifter omegaverse, fated mates, age gap, virgin, knotting/bonding, high steam, HEA.

Back to Writing

I’m starting up writing again, and gonna be real, it’s a bit like wrestling my brain to focus… through barbed wire… while on fire. >_> While jumping back into Demon Bonded, which has been ignored far too fucking long, I came up with a super cute story focused on the apprentices. It’ll be a little mini side story… er, spin off? from the Demon Bonded world.

See, I had this really fun Liem story where he finally chooses a demon after being burned with his experience with Fido/Brave and that douchebag Tobias, but it was its own thing, you know? It felt more than a bonus story, more than just a little side thing, and it was going to be long enough to be multiple episodes—something I’ve never done with a bonus story. And, as we jump into the Aeternum, where Ky meets the apprentices of the time, I realized I really wanted to make a thief apprentice there to mad steal from the sorcerers of Blackstone Falls.

So, I thought, hey, why not just make it all its own thing where, well, Demon Bonded Apprentices are the focus. Liem can be his sadistic self as he tries to be a better person (while being a total asshole to the more dickish apprentices) and winning over a rather wild, violent relic who is very reluctant to trust anyone, and we could also have this super cute Cade sorcerer come in, playing dumb as he infiltrates the apprentice mentor program, while looking to get everything he can from the peeps running a demon slave trade out of the small town.

I don’t think it’ll be a super long story. Like, maybe five episodes tops… but it’s hard to say. You never know, sometimes characters do their own things and surprise you. Cade definitely has his eye on someone, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to steal him too by the time it’s all written. <3

Right now, I’m clinging to the creativity I’m feeling to help pull me through the damn misery of trying to organize my brain to write again. I was working on the interactive choose your own adventure, but realized it was only becoming this loop where I didn’t know how to move forward, so I decided I needed a more linear story to focus on for the moment. This mold thing is fucking hard—it’s like every time it hits, I have to remake my brain all over again to function the way I want. But fuck, it beats looking at the damn news and predicting a horrendous future, so yeah, gotta do the work. Gotta push through and just keep working at it until things flow again. I’m hoping I’ll be myself by the time I finish the Demon Bonded/Demon Bonded Apprentices episodes to jump right into the 3rd PATB episode.

Office!

Oh, shit, I finished setting up my office! It’s so weird to realize I haven’t done a newsletter in so long. @_@ Uh, I basically set up these dry erase note cards all over my office. One set is the completed outline of the next episode of PATB—yeah, I’m on that shit, just waiting for my brain to show up. (The energy needs some tweaking in the first part of the episode, just kinda dragging right now.) The other is focused on Demon Bonded, while I got an entire wall divided between fanfics, WIPs and audiobooks.

I realized this summer that not only did visuals help me comprehend what I had on my plate creatively, but it also made it more manageable. I’ve been doing a lot of things to find ways for anything but my brain to hold onto the info I’ve been juggling all this time in my head. With the way dopamine is lowered from allergy response, and the brain swelling and plain old neurological scrambling that comes along with mold exposure, having external constants where I can just reference my own notes about my books makes writing so much easier. Which I’m learning the hard way this week when writing Demon Bonded and realized I gotta stop and make an actual reference, otherwise this just isn’t going to happen. I already did this with PATB, which is why I was able to bang those two novels out—I had reference at my fingertips. But of course I forgot that was why until I failed to have that reference for Demon Bonded. @_@

It feels like this annoying busy work keeping me from what I want to do, but at the same time, I know if I don’t create a reference, I’m not going to move forward. (fucking adulting for a scrambled brain.) I hate it—it is so boring taking notes of my own stories—but I seriously can’t remember enough to not do the work.

So, yeah, that’s me. My cleanroom bubble is working, and as long as I stay out of moldy buildings, I’m pretty much 100%. It’s just getting my brain to remember the neurological pathways to do the shit it’s good at. Started up bullet journaling again, too.

Honestly, I watched my dad go through dementia, and I had to follow after him, you know, just see the trail of consequences of having a brain that just doesn’t want to do what it needs to do when his kidneys started failing. I am doing everything I can to not default there. It’s not fun. It is always going to feel like work. And if it’s easier on my loved ones, then yeah, I will do the damn work every single time. It becomes a series of habits to keep your head straight after something like this. Ideally, those habits will become default. But if they don’t, they don’t, so it’s better now to build a life where those habits are normalized and set into focus to get the best chance you can at healing.

Peace

Hope you peeps are doing well. I could tell you a zillion horror stories of all my fears since the US Congress decided they didn’t have to protect and support the American people during covid 19 and they just took a fucking month long vaca while letting unemployment insurance drop when our numbers are at a world wide worst, but yeah, with my brain the way it is, I gotta focus on less upsetting things. (but if a revolution is happening anytime soon, count me in.)

Shit’s tough. I think I get by helping others the little that I can. There’s something about feeling part of a community during a time when you see every thing working to divide us that feels a positive rebellion of its own. A smile is a rebellion against the assholes of the world. I don’t know when it became ‘everyone for themselves’ in this country of mine, but it’s a pretty disgusting, sociopathic mentality that has no place in crisis—it has no place in the future of humanity. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not, so better to show up and be good to each other. At least, that’s my motto of the moment. 😉

Hope you’re all safe, all healthy, all happy.

?Of Cleanrooms, Interactive Novels and Politics?

Hey babes, I’m alive.

It’s been over two months since I checked in. >_> Sorry. Things are actually pretty good. It’s hard to put it in perspective because of how the country has been so crazy — I’m in the US with covid cases jumping up again as we ‘reopen,’ (why yes, we’re run by morons) and we’re in the middle of some long needed and 100% justified civil rights protests to support Black Lives Matter. It’s kinda hard to want to write anything about myself right now, because I feel like a grain of sand in the middle of these huge moments in history.

I’m a doer, a problem solver. When something breaks, I immediately think of a million ways to fix it, and then I experiment until I get the solution that works. So it’s hard to live in a country where fixing things isn’t a thing. We talk about innovation in the US, but all we innovate is how to part money from people’s wallets. It’s never about real change, and this place becomes ugly and decaying and stagnant as a result. There are so many in pain, living on vapors their entire lives who are never heard, never represented in this country. Sanders being brought down by status quo Joe Biden, the most conservative mouthpiece in the Democratic party — it breaks me every time to see how pathetic this country is for what we settle for while claiming we’re revolutionaries. (The revolution of sitting on our asses bitching about pointless shit. :/)

I’m really proud of the protests, of the changes being demanded, and I truly hope they don’t stop until real change comes. I have no love for the police, and even less respect or trust. No one’s life should be put above another, and no system should be in place to do exactly that.

But yeah, speaking of solving problems.

I made myself a cleanroom/bubble…

plastic wrapped shelves

bedless, furnitureless bedroom

the office, plastic wrapped and tubbed

I transformed my moldy bedroom and living room into an allergy free zone by building an internal structure out of PVC pipe and wrapping it all in plastic sheeting, basically a bubble inside the room. I ensured there was enough space all around so that the bubble didn’t touch the walls, creating a channel of air where the AC and heater could continue to temperature control all around the bubble. Also sectioned it off from the rest of the main house to ensure that any of that moldy air wouldn’t mix with the non cleanroom living space.

air scrubber for the win

I then used an air scrubber to pull air in through one intake into a sectioned off area in the bubble (basically zippered it off) where the air is then filtered and pushed out into the cleanroom through these really simple vents I made with the plastic sheeting. It creates the positive air flow required to make this work, (because air scrubbers naturally create a negative air flow that would readily pull all the moldy air from outside into the space if not careful.) There are two exhausts of the filtered air, one going into the office area, and the other into the bedroom area, that way, each room can be shut off from each other just in case the worst happens and one is compromised with mold/allergens. And if it is contaminated, I can just unhook the air scrubber and run it in the infected room to suck up the allergens.

(Note: Air scrubbers have been sold out for months because there’s false information going on out there that they can filter covid out of the air. They cannot. If you are seriously worried about covid, there is a cheep, effective solution in the purchase of an ozone machine. I’ve used them to break down allergens for years now, but they also kill coronavirus, including the covid-19 strain. Read the instructions; ozone is dangerous to health and lung function so don’t breathe the shit in. But yeah, ozone– cheep machines versus throwing big money down on shit that won’t even work. I don’t know why people keep getting info wrong, but damn, it keeps fucking up my ability to get basic stuff for allergy survival. @_@)

just waiting for inspiration to strike

Anyways, I now officially have an office, all focused on my writing and art. I can turn a wall into my outlines and no one will complain. XD Oh, I missed having my own room. Living on top of people (messy people, at that) can get tiring really quick.

I’m waiting on a latex mattress for the bedroom. They’re supposed to be really good with people who have allergies and multiple chemical sensitivity. I had to throw out my old mattress years back when it was destroyed by the black mold. But even this, just having the cleanrooms and spending most of my time in them, my health has bounced back. I can read again. Like sit down, and get lost in a book, and not have it feel like my brain can’t focus. I’m looking forward to seeing how that translates to editing, actually… I’m not ‘cured.’ Aka, a lungful of mold still knocks me on my ass, same with me having insomnia and itching all over if the cats so much as jump on a place I end up sleeping. But I recover much faster, and am able to hit *okay* instead of *less sick* when I do recover.

The landlord had sent in a mold remediation crew a couple months back, but my allergies were just too far gone by then. I think some bodies just build neurotoxins up and can’t clear them out after a mold exposure the way others can. I gained so much weight when the white mold took over, it really is like the body can’t let anything go. The dust, the cats— everything was setting me off. I was living in the car, and reacting to any air that got in. It was pretty shit, all in all. But this worked. And it’s not just the way my health is better that’s been so awesome about this, but how it’s lifted a psychological weight from me.

I know mold is everywhere. The wind blows and there’s mold; I might as well be allergic to air. I have never lived in a house or apartment free of mold, and I was seeing this narrow path of misery laid out in front of me of trying to run from mold and gaining only small moments between being knocked out. But now I know I can build a cleanroom anywhere and create a bubble of fresh air. It’s not horrendously expensive, and it’s portable. It’s like being given the keys to my own life, and I’m full of so much gratitude for having found this solution.

Interactive Novels

(aka, adult choose your own adventure books)

Having a space to literally breathe has changed everything, and I’m being deliberately slow in getting back into life as I try to adjust. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve got plenty to be distracted about. My PTSD is on high alert with all the news, so I’ve been tasking myself with finding ways to have fun —more importantly, remember what fun is. @_@ I’m currently outlining an adult choose your own adventure.

I realized as much as I want to do a visual novel, there are just too many elements that were overwhelming me and keeping me from even trying to move forward. Art, coding an entirely different medium— it’s a lot for my mold bruised brain. But a simple choose your own adventure? Way easier.

I doing the dragon gangbang story, using it as one of the paths to multiple different opportunities and storylines. And it’s been crazy fun just to plot out. Like, once I decided on areas in the underground, on specific dragon species in each area, certain required items needed such as a crowbar, an amulet, a flashlight, it was so easy to start coming up with all these different ideas. And I don’t want to talk too much about it, because I don’t want to give anything away! XD I’m doing a secret, bonus branch that you can unlock that will take the reader on a totally different route!!! Gah, it’s so fun just thinking about it.

Focusing on trying to fit as many taboo sexy scenes/scenarios in there as possible has been half the joy of this. It’s really the strategy of creating the story and trying to design something fun as fuck for the reader that’s been the most interesting part. Here’s a little idea of my outlining process. I’m using Scapple, which has been so perfect in conceptualizing and organizing it all. (the text should be too fuzzy to read, but it’s all early stuff, so if shouldn’t matter anyways.)

What else… Oh, I finished the Hellcat audiobook which members of the site can listen to. Also did the same for Fox Claims Vince, and finally made a cover for it. I’m still doing the audiobooks while working on the interactive story. It’s really important to me that I make the site more accessible. Now that I can read again, I realize just how much I lost during that time, and I want to make sure anyone else who might be struggling in such a way has a ready option.

Fox Claims Vince cover art

I do this thing where I stress myself out with these lofty goals every time I get healthy again, partially because I see me not feeling sick as these little windows that I have to sprint through or they’re wasted. But when you’re healthy, life is more a marathon, and I don’t really know how to balance my time or set appropriate goals that won’t burn me out. It’s something I’m going to have to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ambition and the challenge of my work and doing things like writing a novel a month, but this is also in the middle of a global pandemic and civil rights movement months before one of the most consequential elections of my lifetime to date. Will the US finally get a vote by mail system that’s accessible to all, or are we watching what’s left of democracy crumble into the ocean?

Figuring out how to survive this political shitshow

July is quickly approaching when the covid 19 unemployment benefits of, you know, basic living wage that has been like a lottery in my house will run out, and I’m looking at all the bills I deliberately didn’t pay the last months because I knew the moment covid hit, that this cliff would be inevitable, and it’s better to have enough $ now to eat than throw away on bills early on, no matter the debt accrued. Covid has not magically cured itself or disappeared with the hot weather. There is no 100% guarantee that a vaccine will be viable, and if it is, not for 6 months to a year. It’s a really stressful time, as I’m sure lots of people are experiencing right now, especially those without financial support.

If you’re not up to date, or even better, if you live in a country who cares about their citizens, Congress is basically leaving us to die in America. More than half of the people in Congress are millionaires who have no perspective to the wealth inequality they’re creating. Those with enough money to work from home have no idea what it’s like to have a job where you’re asked to go die so that other people can have groceries or gas or fast food. For every person who readily wears a mask, there is another who refuses to, will walk into businesses, get into people’s faces and will not be stopped from coughing or sneezing or contaminating others, including the workers who have to be there.

Our government should be paying us to stay home and uphold the public health to prevent an overburdening of hospitals, but instead they looted our taxes and handed it to the largest corporations in the country to bail them out, and they’re letting the citizens fail, ensuring that we will not be economically sound enough to do the job of staying home and upholding public health. Partly why some people want to go to work right now in America is because they don’t have any food, they don’t have any income, and they have no way to get it. They’re being kicked out of their houses and apartments because they can’t pay to stay there. They have kids who need to eat, and have nothing— losing school meant losing the school lunch program for families in need. Entire states are refusing to pay unemployment benefits because they don’t want to give the tax money collected from citizens back to their citizens. They want the people to go to work like a global pandemic isn’t happening at all, no matter who dies.

And as stark as that is, it’s leading to a larger, even worse problem, because the economic classes are being divided greater than ever before. Wealth has changed hands exponentially where the stock market and fortune 500 companies have seen their greatest gains in decades while citizens are kicked out of their homes and lost businesses and jobs. The mismanagement of covid relief from the government is leading to hundreds of thousands of small businesses shutting down completely because little to nothing was enacted to support their payrolls, to ensure workers would have jobs to go to after this is all done. And larger businesses gobbled up the money whenever a loophole was available. Even when the big businesses gave the money back, that went right into the government’s pocket, not to the small businesses that needed it. Fresh graduates have no jobs to go to, unless they want a pittance and to risk their lives and the lives of their families as an essential worker as they clutch their expensive degrees.

My country is looking at a cataclysm of wealth inequality that will be felt for the next decade, easy, with businesses who don’t uphold human rights like Amazon taking over our infrastructure (pretty sure we’re going to see the Post Office destroyed and Amazon put in place) and Bezos looking to be the first trillionaire ever. All while small businesses are wiped out and those running them won’t be able to get credit or cash to revive them because the banks are playing favorites and no one is stopping them. And we’re given a joke of a candidate against Trump, a man who wants to turn things back to 4 years ago to a time that led us to exactly why we ended up with Trump and the wealth divide we have. The government is infested with corporatists wearing either blue or red political signs and claiming they’re going to fix things while they keep bleeding the American people dry.

The reality is, we have a government who doesn’t care about the lives of their people. And it’s not a new problem. It’s why health care only goes to those who can afford it in the richest country in the world. Why you need a fucking job to be allowed to have healthcare—how insane as millions upon millions of Americans are removed from their employment and they lose their healthcare all in one go during covid. They did nothing to stop it from happening and they don’t care that in a global pandemic Americans can’t afford to go to a doctor. This is why drug patents are paid for by our government and then handed for free to pharmaceutical companies who then charge gigantic profits on every American who needs that drug. My diabetic brother is getting a first hand lesson of watching his insulin prices jump up during covid — when people have less money — all because the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to gouge us until we’re literally dead. It’s why minimum wage is not a living wage, and hasn’t been for years. It’s why black individuals can be shot and murdered by police again and again while they try to survive in an economic genocide that’s been going on since slaves were freed centuries ago. It’s why our prisons are for profit and not for rehabilitation.

Our government doesn’t care if we live. And when that’s the reality, the next best thing you can get is for your government to be terrified of the people. The protests are important, and even more so are the riots, and I am happy to support whoever is going out there risking attack by equipment and strategies made for war as unarmed protesters fight against the tyranny of their militarized, tax funded police force. The government shouldn’t be comfortable— no one should be comfortable right now until every single person is allowed to be as safe as the most wealthiest among us.

Change can happen, but only if we’re willing to be uncomfortable, and willing to let go of our collective apathy.

So yeah, shit is grim. I don’t have any glasses rose colored enough to make this not stink like the shit it is. And because my brain is far too aware of exactly all of this, I need to find coping strategies like focusing on how to have fun. And once this adult choose your own adventure book is made, maybe it will help others have a little fun too — because fuck, we all need some damn fun. Revolutions aren’t won in a day. This fucking battle for equality has been going on my entire lifetime and far longer before it. We gotta live, even as we continue to fight the good fight.

Oh, and if you have issues with an erotic author speaking about politics, you can suck my clit. I don’t care about your minuscule discomfort when people are out there literally being murdered for existing while black. If you haven’t figured out what I stand for yet, see my bluntness as a gift.

Hope you’re all safe. Hope you’re all healthy, and being smart, and not risking you or the lives of your community by being fucktards mid global pandemic. We’re all in this together (whether we like it or not.) We are only as strong as our willingness to raise up the weakest. This pandemic is because of our horrendous approach to environmentalism, an approach that will be repeated no matter which candidate in the US is elected because they both don’t give a fuck about the changes that need to happen. So hopefully we will find some real problem solvers to step up, because this apathy and looting of the country as it decays just isn’t working. Enough is enough.

Whelp… found out why I’m so tired ⭐

Hey peeps,

So, this is a tough one, but I’m trying to not have it be a tough one because attitude is pretty much everything these days. There’s mold in my place. White mold– less toxic by default than the black stuff that took over my bedroom and living room a couple years ago. It’s in the basement this time around– we discovered it when some random ceiling tiles fell down. There’s a mini bathroom down there, unfinished, and the ceiling tiles suddenly fell and knocked a shelf sideways. And I guess there’s been moisture building, and mold growing for a while, and with the tiles down it’s all exposed to the air…

Teh landlord is working with us to ensure it all gets cleaned up, but it’s going to take some time. and I… well, I already broke. Let’s be real. The exhaustion of late from the mold growing under the floor was suddenly joined with brain sparking once the spores flooded the air, and I’m just struggling to pull myself back together. Dystonia has started up again, my limbs unbearably heavy, head hard to hold up, brain fucked– it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.
 

A break

I’ve stopped working on the books for now. I can’t do it– I can’t watch my brain slip away all over again after I fought so hard to get here. I can’t force myself to walk a path my body and brain can’t survive like this. I spent over two years pouring the little energy and focus I could muster into writing these books, only to get my brain back and rewrite them each in a month– its not fucking worth the effort to write when my brain is broken. I only exhaust myself while somehow feeling like a constant failure.

So this time I’m resting– I am bored out of my mind, but I refuse to contribute to the destruction of myself by trying to get this broken brain to do what it can’t do. Mold is tough enough on me without me being an unrealistic psycho as well.

Uh… but I decided on a project for the moment so the boredom and bitterness can’t creep in and overtake me. I had another reader approach me about the fact that they can’t use text to audio technology on my site to hear the books, and it got me thinking how hard it has been for me to read since my brain got scrambled with mold. So, while I’m waiting to get the mold removal peeps in to survey and figure out what’s going to happen next, I’m starting to make some basic audio books of the completed stories on the site. That way subscribers can choose to read or hear the words, and for those who struggle with reading a screen or wall of text (I get it, it swims after a while) will have an option that works for them.

It’s hard to stay awake. It’s hard to have my mind when I am awake. The world is filtered though inflammaiton right now and doesn’t fully make sense — and the fact that the most competent candidate for president in the US dropped out because America can’t see a woman as electable is just as insane. So fuck it all — gotta let the insanity play out as it will. I will survive this. I already have, and I damn well know the books will be awesome once my brain is in working order to finish writing them, and yeah, this is a break. A pause in the journey, and while on this pause I can create something useful for people who need better accessibility to my site.
 

… sorry in advance

I don’t know if I can handle whatever people want to say in response to all this, gonna be real. I definitely can’t handle pity, barely disappointment, well wishes– seriously, I feel like acknowledging the potential shittiness of mold over taking my house in the middle of winter when I should be safe is just too freaking hard right now. 2 months — I had two months of a working brain, wrote two books and it was stolen away just like that… >_> You guys are awesome and it’s totally not your fault I’m a psychological mess over all this, and I apologize now because I doubt I will respond to emails. I’m tired, and this has broken me in a way I don’t want to think about right now.

This will be easier to heal from — I know how, now. I know I can. I know this isn’t the end I feared it was each time it hit. But there is this frustration with realizing how damn fragile I am, where the other people in the house go through their days like nothing has happened while I once again am trapped in a body that doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to think. And it’s just the way this body is. Mold will alwasy be out there and my body is always going to react like this, no promise of any stability or ability to plan.

And currently, I can’t get a face mask to save my life with everyone buying them up with the coronavirus fear — face mask only theoretically prevent you from spreading the disease if you have it, btw, you can still catch it while wearing a mask. Coronavirus can survive outside the human body for up to 9 days, and in colder temperatures, up to a month. (Aka, practice good hygiene and don’t lick anyone.) And maybe get the facts straight on how to clean it up while you’re at it. And if you find yourself with sudden conjunctivitis, it could be coronavirus and it is contagious by eye.

So even though masks won’t save someone from getting coronavirus, proper masks prevent the brain sparking inhalation of mold spores for someone like me, and I am shit out of luck. I’m grateful this hasn’t turned into multiple chemical sensitivity like last time — a good sign the spores this current mold is releasing aren’t as bad as the previous one. But people who need those multiple chemical sensitivity masks to be able to not feel like they’re going to die in unbearable pain 24-7, I’m sure they’re struggling more than ever now because of this ignorance of others about face masks. Ignorance + panic rarely helps anyone. :/

Hope you’re all safe out there, and your week is going better than mine. There’s never a bad time to remember all the people you love and spend a little extra time with them, yeah? Even with the world gone mad, it’s good to remember what matters.

?A PATB Prequel?

Hey babes,

This week, I thought I’d try something new. I was thinking we could do some character prequels for The Paranormal Academy For Troubled Boys Serial. But… I wasn’t sure where to start. I thought since we’re in the Demon Arm Saga of everything, we might focus on either Wylie or Dorian. For Wylie, I want to start where he meets Beck, how they kinda drift towards each other when Wylie starts school after placed in the detention home. Then go into how Beck eventually gets Wylie interested in the gang because of Beck’s personal problems at home as he tries to escape a really oppressive/abusive home life. For Dorian story, I wanted to go into how he had his accident, all set within his very difficult home life of being a sorcerer expected to live up to a family name while he just wants to be a normal teen. When he rebels, and seeks hope with Alastor, that’s really when it all goes to shit for Dorian, and he ends up at the Academy a little after, where, three years later, Wylie shows up. So Wylie’s story would be much more recent to events, while Dorian’s story is a more detailed account of his power origin story.

So because I’m too close to this, I thought I’d leave it up to the fans to decide which story they would rather read. I’ll probably end up writing both eventually, but for now I just want to do one. This prequel will be 100% free, btw! So I’ve made a poll where people can click which character story they would rather read first as a prequel. Check it out and let me know what you think.

• Click to decide who gets the first PATB prequel!

So I am in the middle of writing episode #3 of PATB serial, and it’s kind of exciting because we get a really good inside look at Academy life for the shifters. I love being able to expand on the world so much more this time around, and really start fleshing out the characters and their experiences. Wylie and Dorian are also going to have more moments as they try to figure out if what’s sparking between them is more important than the warnings the Academy Masters keep giving them. I get to start on one such scene on Monday, and I’m excited about that. <3

What I’m realizing as of late, is just how hard it is to juggle writing and having a life – still! I thought feeling better would make it easier. I made a point to take the weekend off, and that’s more of a joke to me in a lot of ways because I did so much work this weekend! I have so much work that I didn’t finish this weekend! @_@ But I did make a point to go outside both days before coming home and getting more work done. I would like to be able to pace these sorts of things during the rest of the week so I could actually have a weekend off, but that might be like trying to bend the reality of time in some ways. The truth is, there’s just a lot to do.

I wanted to let you guys know that I have been reading all the comments about what your fan fav taboo subjects are, and I am definitely looking at writing a new episode of Demon Bonded – well, at least fleshing out an episode – for March. I don’t want over promise anything right now. My main priority is the PATB serial, and I do want to get one out a month. But I know the fans of Demon Bonded have been ravenous for more, and me being sick and unable to write the last year has made the anticipation for the next episode certainly much worse. So I want to make sure I get some word count in there for you guys.

Also, I seriously have to get to emails and comments tonight. I have been ignoring my inbox outside of any website issues the last… 2 weeks? 3? It’s another thing I need to figure out how to juggle and squeeze into my day in a more effective way. I got so many ARC readers responding and sharing their reviews—you peeps are awesome and I loved every one!

I’m really not good at task switching. I definitely can’t multitask at all. My brain just will not. So I gotta figure something out because this stuff doesn’t get easier the more I write – if anything it gets more difficult as I put all my attention into writing, and fail to be able to balance with the rest of the world. But I’m enjoying my weekend off, of sorts, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to have some time to think about how I’m just always rushing toward a goal instead of planning things better. Doing things doesn’t have much point if you don’t enjoy the journey. I can always get something done, but I won’t remember it as being worthwhile if I didn’t enjoy the process. It’s important. I should treat it as important as it is.

I hope you guys are having a great weekend; the weather here has been amazing. Well, as long as we don’t think of it is terrible climate change creeping up on us. @_@ I’m trying to keep the real world out of my newsletters as much as possible, because I need the escape I’m pretty sure just as much as we all do. So for today, I’m focusing on the wonderful weather and the nice, comforting cup of decaf coffee I’m drinking. Happy reading, and don’t forget to vote for your fav prequel idea!

?10 Changes From Demon Arms To The PATB Serial

Hey peeps,

I’m hanging out at the hospital. My brother ended up with appendicitis and we’re waiting to see if the antibiotics will be enough, or if he’ll need surgery. So, to avoid having to think of all those worrisome things, I thought I share with you all some of the reasons I went in the direction I did with The Paranormal Academy For Troubled Boys Serial.

Oh, if you missed the preorder for the second episode of PATB Serial, you can snag it here!

Before I get into the changes made in the serial, I picked up a book today that was, like, everything I’ve been missing in my reading lately. In the first chapter alone there was forced-to-fuck, straight to gay, noncon, and unseen alien/demonic entities controlling the action. First chapter. And yeah, there’s plot too. <3 So if you’re interested in a crazy, wild ride of a read—one that’s only $0.99—you should check out the Beast In The Nothing Room.

A lot of amazing books released this week. I’m putting them all here, cuz I’m being wordy today and I don’t want anyone to miss any of the deals.

MM Reads

MF and LGBTQ Reads

10 Things I deliberately changed in PATB (and didn’t)

So, I feel like I should start this off by explaining, a lot of these changes came about because of branding. When I started writing, I wasn’t thinking too much of long term. I was ill, life was happening, and writing was just about whatever felt fun in the moment. But that started to change once I saw my health improving, and I could look at my writing as a business, not just an escape. I had to make some big decisions of how I wanted to brand the Sadie Sins books so that whenever someone picked up one of my books, they would have a fair idea of what to expect about the contents.

If you’ve read episode #1 of the PATB Serial (which hit bestseller in LGBT fantasy last week!!! <3 ) and happened to have read Demon Arms before, you might already have an idea of what direction I’m going for with my branding. But if you haven’t, I’m happy to explain it a bit.

1. More Than Insta Love!

When I was writing the first sequel to Demon Arms, I got to do something I’d never done before. I got to write characters falling in love instead of crashing straight there. I wanted to do that in the Demon Arms story arc too, where it felt like there were reasons Wylie and Dorian end up together, emotional connections and stuff beyond plain old chemistry and a demanding inner dragon. I wanted a space they could grow together, not just magic into love. I write a lot of lust stories—and I love them, don’t get me wrong! XD But I wanted to write a real love story (well, ass real as magic and shifters can get, anyways.)

2. Turning Up The Heat

This was actually one of the choices I struggled with conceptually for a while with this series, partially with how tame I had written Demon Arms. Demon Arms had been confused for YA by a lot of readers, YA with some sex—it just didn’t make much sense, especially when these readers would then see what else I wrote and find a bunch of books that pushed limits they didn’t want pushed. This choice was where the branding direction came in, and I’m sure it is both controversial and loved depending on each reader’s preference.

Here’s the deal, I didn’t want to have to use a new pen name for this series, I didn’t want to build something from scratch, and more importantly, I didn’t want to find myself stuck writing a series I didn’t enjoy writing. So I went in and turned the heat up. For the peeps leaving reviews such as ‘rape and more rape’ yes, that was absolutely by design. Now you know; welcome to a Sadie Sins’s book. For anyone who picks up episode #1 of PATB Serial and enjoys it, they can be happy to discover that my other books contain adult subjects, much of it dark and sexual explicit, and they will not be freaked out by that. For those who can’t handle this first episode, I don’t have to worry about them hating on my other books.

So you’re now all informed. There will be no ‘sweet’ Demon Arms sequels free of kinky sex and aggressive personalities. I’m planning threesomes, sexual slavery, dubcon, scenes of my delicious killer Theo doing what he does best, dark moments, caretakers crossing boundaries with patients, and just all around fun. There’s no point having a power like allure and not using it like a weapon or weakness. This is a world of dark, manipulative magics gained through hunting down and killing shifters; it’s not supposed to be a civilized reflection of reality.

I want a mature audience. I’m not talking like in age (although, to be real, I’ve met more than a few awesome-sauce 80 year old fans.) I’m talking a more mature mentality when it comes to erotic sex, in not thinking fiction is real, in allowing a book to be a book and not demanding it be anything else. I want to have some fucking fun, and I don’t need peeps crying rape about words on a screen. (Go ahead, try to rape words. See how they respond when you shove a dick into text. If pain is felt, it’s not from the damn words.)

This is a tame series, but it’s still a Sadie Sins book. I’m tired of being told erotic sex can’t ever meet amazing plot and strong characterization. I’m tired of people trying to insist that sex ruins the validity and value of a story, and that stories with sex have to be hidden away. I do not subscribe to that kind of discriminatory thinking about my fiction, and I want to draw in readers who don’t either.

3. Show, Not Tell

I started this when I wrote Hellcat, this hint of craft that’s been growing after I spent a few years writing. I has started looking at scripts, started studying movies and tv series and musing on how I could improve the things my writing was lacking. I needed to create a more concrete world. My characters were all in their heads, narrating the events instead of IN the events. I wanted to show the world, but more importantly, show how the characters impacted their environment. What did a gesture do to the scene—a burst of magic, a flare of anger, anxiety? If it were a movie, how would it look, and how would the physical world change in response to the character’s action? I felt the best way to get the characters out of their heads was to put them in the scene.

Now, when Wylie’s hands are shaking because he’s nervous, he tears through a shelf and a bundle of cash so we can SEE he’s nervous. We don’t narrate that men are hollering at Theodore for base, sexual favors but have them shout thinks like “suck my dick, sexy!” In my first draft of Hellcat, I had tried to explain that Sean was a shitty friend to TJ, only to realize it would be way easier to show it by having him jerk off while talking to him on the phone. It that doesn’t say total shit friend, what does, right?

There are some consequences to showing instead of telling. My very first draft of Demon Arms was in first person, and it had a strong narrative voice as a result that shined through even when I changed it to third person for the final draft of the book. Showing a scene instead of letting Wylie tell it stripped a lot of the personality away from his inner voice. I tried to preserve it a bit, ensure that his thoughts or words were heard, but it absolutely changed things. Wylie’s not just telling a story now but is in one, reacting to what’s happening, and at the same time, the environment reacting to him.

I still struggle with it. It’s a new skill I’m learning, not quite a natural habit, but it makes me see my writing in a brand new way, I love that. I love the challenge. I can’t imagine ever settling for the same old thing as a creative. Without the promise of something new to learn, it just gets boring after a while.

4. Beast Voices

This was a last minute decision, but it made this story in a lot of ways. I was doing the final draft and I kept forgetting the motivation of a very important character Wylie was dealing with: his dragon. There’s this voice inside of him that’s been quiet for so long, so quiet that he confused it with his own for the last 10 years. Yet here he is, mid heist, letting his demon arms out for the longest time ever, and he’s starting to realize he’s not that alone in his head. That the shit he thought was annoying about his arms is actually quite deliberate because the beast inside him is a different being who wants different things—for starters, blood.

Wylie was not an ‘out-of-control’ paranormal like the other patients in Demon Arms, he was just a wannabe thug with a bad past that he used to excuse his shitty behavior. But as our intro into the series, I wanted to show what out of control really meant—how a shifter could lose control because they’re battling with a completely different personality inside them. I think Theodore becomes a beautiful example for this. We don’t really know why he’s working for the Academy in this intro, why he is so interested in ensuring the patients are safe, but we know in this first book that he is damn well familiar with what it’s like to be out of control when it comes to his dragon. For the most part, they seem in sync, doing what needs to be done, the goals the same… until the dragon asserts a demand of the moment, and you can see the cascade of compromises Theodore must make to get along with the beast.

Would these compromises be required when things are much calmer, when stress isn’t crashing down around Theodore? Probably not. We get to see the beasts as a stress response, where the more difficult something presses on Theodore psychologically, the more his beast rebels and wants to do things his way. It’s why Wylie’s dragon showed up in that gang initiation—stress. Stress kills, even. XD We don’t see Theodore go out of control, but we do see what happens when his beast is in control, tearing through skinners and full of a rage that comes from being hunted for a lifetime and seeing so many die.

I found that in Demon Arms, the conflict was rather nonexistent or easily diffused when it came to the patients. It wasn’t realistic, and I realized I needed those beast voices—those impulsive, animalistic reactions—to keep tensions up in the more peaceful parts of the story. Otherwise, it’s boring.

5. A Grown Up Perspective

I really wanted some adults to get a pov this time around. Theodore and Michael get love story arcs later in the series that I wanted to easily transition into by giving them stronger parts now. I wanted to head hop, I’ll be real. XD I like head hopping, and apparently I did it well this time cuz no complaints were made (that I saw.) I want readers to meet the characters and care, and I could only do that if they got to really see and feel what it was like to be in their shoes.

But also, Theo and Michael are the first wave of Academy goers—the ones still alive—and they’ve seen up close the world and danger that they’re protecting their paranormal patients from. They’re a bridge in a lot of ways, providing a more worldly view. They don’t get to hide from the world but are forced to navigate it as a form of protection. They understand when direct action is needed and how sometimes good and bad are completely blurred when fighting to live. That those lines are naturally blurred when it comes to killing, and trying to pretend they aren’t is idealistic nonsense that neither of them subscribe to.

Killing to survive is not a heroic act. Murder at all is not some white shining knight BS. Death should not be prettied up or sanitized—to kill a person, there is blood, pain, a line crossed every time. This is not a simple ‘bad guys are evil and therefore they deserve to die’ type of series. That’s 2-Dimensional and unrealistic. Everyone who dies is a character, and I want my characters to be fleshed out, felt, possibly even mourned.

I am not here to write a manual of how to be a good person—the teens in this book; that goal might be important to a lot of them. It’s usually a theme for younger people as they strive to find a place in the world. But Michael and Theodore have experienced a level of life—of war and slaughter and systematic bigotry—that makes them not care about morality the same way. They care about survival; they care about a life well lived; they care about doing what needs to be done with ruthless precision, sometimes preemptively, so that they can wake up and face themselves in the mirror each day because their patients weren’t slaughtered. For every confused question from the teens of if it’s right to do bad to survive, our caretaker adults already have an answer and it’s ‘it doesn’t matter. Just survive.’

6. Not Always Agreeing With The Characters

This was a risk, but at the same time I find the stories I love the most are of complex characters we don’t necessarily like all the time. I don’t think good characters are necessarily supposed to be people that would be your best friend. I think it’s a bit like the funny prankster in a story; that guy is usually a sarcastic, total asshole. People ignore it because they laugh, but the reality is you don’t want to live with Homer Simpson, or Peter Griffin, or with those douche-bags from the big bang nerd show. People in sitcoms are fucking terrible, and I don’t think their behavior should really be a reflection of how people should treat each other. But that doesn’t mean they’re not entertaining.

So, this is not a sitcom. These are people trying to do the right thing, but in situations where right is a compromise to the dark stuff happening around them. It’s the compromise of ‘a little bit better than worst.’ First time around, everyone was best friends in the Academy, except for Leo. Leo is won over pretty easily, and you see this a lot in stories, especially romance troops. It’s like this equalizing of conflict and personalities to get along, just because the characters are all in the same scenes. They lose their independence, they lose their motivation, and they become tools for the author who is failing to notice that these characters are no longer there own personalities.

In that regard, I’m trying to be better this time around (but it is tough.) I’m not saying on making them enemies for the sake of conflict – although there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s more, trying to allow the characters to be true to themselves while not being caught up by my own personal need to make them agreeable to get the plot going. Sometimes characters kick and scream, fighting against the plot, and those are usually the best stories. These big personalities, these alphas, sorcerers, just inner beasts combined with hormonal teens and 20 somethings should not result in everyone getting along. That shouldn’t be automatic; that should be what a lot of the work in the character development is for, teaching them to get along.

7. Villains

I realized we needed villains. Wylie’s gangsters weren’t going to be enough. How could I show that this was a world full of shifter hunters, that shifters were actually in danger, and let it be felt, not just heard in passing? Well, now the police station isn’t full of indifferent professionals who were just trying their best, but some are clearly bigoted against paranormals like Wylie, hating him just because they know at some point he can turn into something they can’t. We can see the bigotry is deep, where even the paramedics, a company created to help people, would put the well-being of others and their own profit aside to ensure their unreasonable hatred makes their decisions.

This is why villains, shifter hunters and skinners, were needed from the very beginning. We need to see what it means to hunt a shifter, what that power looks like that they’re trying to obtain, the type of money that went into it—that armored bus wasn’t cheap—and we got to see that in things like the chameleon coat, and some of the abilities the skinners use against Theodore as they battle. We get to see the hatred, the question of what is really human in the sorcerer who takes over George Snyder’s appearance. Here’s a sorcerer passing as everyone else around him, but his hatred runs far deeper than any strangeness that would be in a shifter hiding in human flesh.

These themes were already there in the first book, but they were just themes, they weren’t really realized in the environment. I think this time around you get to feel the weight of these concepts, see how the world is shaped by them. I’m actually rather excited about it, to be honest. Characters grow the best when in conflict, and stories get more interesting as a result.

8. Increased Word Count and Detail

Okay, this was not particularly planned. Actually, I fought this a lot until I realized just WHY my writing style had changed so drastically. When I realized what was happening, I gave into it. I don’t subscribe to a ‘right’ kind of writing. I think we all have different styles and that’s perfectly fine. But I do know as a content creator, some level of consistency in style is helpful, if not expected, and that was my concern in all this.

Here’s the reality: my brain changed. I had no say in the matter. It started happening once I got my allergies under control. I think the first signs of it were when I was writing Hellcat in the beginning of 2018. That book—believe it or not—was supposed to be a short story. Instead it became a novel over 100,000 words long. I noticed something was happening in my head, how I looked at words, how I started to *see* a scene and not just float around in the dark. Shortly after publishing Hellcat, I was hit with mold that took over my bedroom and living room, and the neurotoxins had me suffering with multiple chemical sensitivity for months. During this really shitty time, my brain got messed up. It’s hard to be an observer to your mind when your brain is the one struggling, but my functionality in my life was impaired. Eventually, after taking a ton of supplements to regrow neurons, support and protect my brain, supplement my flat lined dopamine, remove the neurotoxins, heal the damage, lower the inflammation and stop the immune response, I returned to ‘normal.’ Except normal had changed.

You can see the change when during episode 11 of Demon Bonded in July, 2018. What averaged as 15,000 word episodes became 35,000 just for a handful of scenes, and I was completely unable to stop it. My brain had decided on a new level of ‘done,’ and it wasn’t where the old line used to be.

Have you ever looked at the way someone cleans a kitchen counter top—or a room, or maybe it’s their car, etc—and it’s different from the way you clean? We all have different levels of done. Some people need to wash that counter down, make sure every crumb and speck it swept away, clearing off the surface completely just to neatly arrange things back once it’s all clean: that’s their done. Someone else, they pick up the obviously dirty dishes piled there, toss them in the sink for washing later, and flick a few crumbs away: that’s their done. Another person might glance at the mess on the counter top and decide to go watch tv: that’s their done. We’re all different, yet we still have a line that’s called done. My done line moved, and it feels in a drastic way, much more toward the cleaning every fucking aspect of the counter to then neatly arrange the stuff back on the top. And no, this style is not always relatable to people who wait a week or month to get to cleaning their counter top.

When I started this rewrite, I noticed that a scene suddenly took 3 times the amount of words to write on average. It required more words to describe a scene, to linger and show an action instead of have the character think something unattached to the physical world of the scene. The style was more immersive, more in-depth, more action oriented. And to be real, when I saw this drastic change, I worried. A lot. I had attracted a fan base with my previous style. 100%. And I know the writing game—popular fiction is rarely about wordage or sophisticated vocabulary. And erotica? Yeah, no. Just no. This could absolutely destroy me as a writer if my fanbase hated it. But… my brain couldn’t write any other way.

I had no choice in this. Seriously, it’s not like I’m looking to pad word count, or scam people by making a book so long it needs to be broken into pieces, or anything like that. It broke me for a while— I could see the severe problems with such a big writing style change after years of having put out a different style. It could be career breaking, or at least fan breaking—I don’t even like to read long books, but here I am, everything I write becoming long as fuck! My brain changed and there was nothing I could do about it.

So… I chose to embrace it instead of trying to slice up this new style. I had spent far too long battling with myself, battling my insecurities, and making compromises where I was never allowed to just exist as I am. I accepted there was no going back and forged forward instead. The new style came naturally, meaning I would write faster this way, in flow, as long as I didn’t battle myself. If I set the style in the first book, those who liked it would know the entire series had the same style instead of getting a bad surprise next book. And it is a style thing—style doesn’t mean anything beyond a preference of getting words on a page. I can’t decide what readers like; I can only write to the best of my ability and put my work out there.

I am absolutely certain that I have alienated previous readers with this style, and there is very little I can do about it but keep writing. I’m sorry if you were used to how I wrote before; I really am. I can just hope my brain has settled and sticks with one style—whatever it might be—so fans won’t have to go through such a drastic change again.

9. Serial Instead of Novels

This story was too complex in plot and far too much planned in the future to be able to squish it all into a novel format. Demon Arms was planned as a love story a book, and it just wasn’t going to work. I started Fox and Vincent’s story arc in the sequel and they just couldn’t fit some romance mold. So instead of cutting the story down to fit a norm, I decided to go wild and plan this as a long serial. Each episode plans to be around 80,000 words, give or take.

10. Demon Arms Was Unscathed

I think the greatest reason I was able to break out of the old style was by not touching Demon Arms. This wasn’t a rewrite that was ‘fixing’ the original. I didn’t want to replace it, didn’t want to take it away from the fans. This was probably the final deciding factor in why I pushed to create it as a serial instead of novels; I needed to change the format completely to push away from it getting caught up in the old book.

I was a younger author when I wrote Demon Arms, still swayed by popular demands, still trying to figure out what my style was, what my brand was. I had to think hard about if I wanted to be isolated on Amazon and the romance genre for being dark—dark romance was so damn small, and it was hard to know if it would be allowed to grow when everyone was screaming about requiring HEAs for a book to be a ‘real’ romance, etc. I didn’t want to erase the first book even though I had grown up. When I set out to write the PATB Serial, I knew who I was, and I knew who Sadie Sins was, and I didn’t need to erase that journey.

Sadie Sins does not write young adult. Her endings are happy but there are always compromises, always dark paths to get there, and morality is not the main key. Cleverness, perseverance, character connections; that’s how happy endings are reached. Love in the darkest of moments fuel these characters to never give up, to be their best versions, even if they’re still imperfect and held back by their unique limits. It’s easy to love a diamond for its shine, but far more valuable to love it for its flaws.

?The New Book Is Live! (alive?!!!?)

Hey babes,

All right, it’s official. The first episode of the paranormal Academy for troubled boys is live! Preorder peeps, it should have been delivered to your kindles. For KU readers and those showing up late (well, on time, really >_>) you can go and read it now! Get it, get it, get it!!! <3

Once you’re done reading, I would totally love it if you reviewed. I’m looking for as much feedback as I can get on my new writing style… I’m not nervous at all, totally. @_@

Okay, I’m totally nervous =_=

Why is everything a trial by fire thing with me?!!! Seriously, ugh. I’m so tired of being a crazy person.

So, I didn’t actually realize how nervous I would be to release a new book after all this time. I don’t think it’s even about releasing a new book, if I’m really honest about it all. I think a part of me is afraid to see myself healthy, and even more terrified to see myself successful in the things I do every day. I have been avoiding emails—as freaking wonderful as everyone has been, it’s only triggered this crazy thing in my head all the more. I’ve been very focused on work, and when not that, quietly freaking out in the little corner of my life.

I am very good at facing that which doesn’t allow me to run away. A body that breaks down, suddenly bedbound, random weird shit happening like multiple chemical sensitivity, feeling like my brain is burning, the Parkinson’s. I took those things on because if I didn’t, it felt like death. But for some reason, moving towards being a different person through the success of my writing… also feels like death for me. >_> Yeah. *sigh* I think my brain is wired for PTSD at this point, and as such, I have a responsibility to deal with all these weird psychosis head-on.

I guess fear of success is not uncommon for those who have experienced trauma. I was reading about it all last night while trying not to have a freak out as I saw my preorders hit. This is why I didn’t want to advertise and just focus on writing the next book. I didn’t want to face the things I needed to do to make this book sell and therefore change my life. I can see it now – self-awareness is such a bitch – and yeah, I’m going to have to figure out something. Therapist, very likely. I refuse to be trapped in my life over my own damn brain.

I’m wired for these types of problems. If you notice the new disclaimer in this current book, my ‘sensitivity disclaimer’, it might seem quirky, or even insensitive depending on who’s reading it. But the reality is, that’s something I need to remind myself. Not just with books, but with also movies, art, stories people share about their lives about things not happening that moments. I talk about this particular problem a lot, because it was once how my brain saw things 24-7. I’m not just reminding and reaffirming with people, but also reaffirming my own mind the difference between fantasy and reality. Trauma wired my brain in a messed up way, so when I have a narrative, a story about myself that I share to the world, I don’t always get to know that it’s a narrative, a fiction—that I am more than a bunch of words on a page or the thoughts in my head. It’s important that I remember—that we all remember—that we can be more than how we perceive ourselves to be in a moment of depression or low self-esteem.

I know, this is some heavy shit to be talking about when it should be all happy the new book is out kind of stuff. I have this difficult habit of being far too real. Go read, enjoy, and please review. Reviews are needed for that success aspect of the book, but it also lets me know if people want to see more of something. Oh, and don’t miss out on the books below!

I hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend, and I’ll be hitting you up fairly soon. The second episode is already on preorder and will be released on Valentine’s Day. Yeah I went as cheesy as possible with that, because it’s when we introduce Dorian. XD It’s always good to do Valentine’s Day right with sparking sorcerers and hissing dragon shifters. 😉

Happy reading!

Books worth snagging <3

MM Freebies, KU, and new releases