So, as I write adult fiction, sex and romance put in an appearance, in one form or another, in my work. My journey along this path has been anything but straight and smooth.

• The first time I wrote a sex scene – in a wire bound notebook – it was fine.

I viewed it as a plot device and didn’t have any issues with it.

Then someone I knew read it…

• I went through a period where I had to put on headphones and play music really loud so I didn’t have to think about anyone I knew reading what I was writing.

For the life of my I could not convince them I wasn’t writing from personal experience.*

• Over time I got back to it being part of the plot/overall story

I told certain people to skip over the sex scenes.

• I went through a crisis where I thought I would run out of ways to write the scenes, that it would get boring

A friend listened politely, listened, laughed, then pointed out that not only are there as many ways as there are couples, but that with my imagination, I would not have a problem. In other words, believe in myself as a writer. 

• I went through another round of “Oh my god, people who know me will read this!”

My husband, who not only worked in the same [previous] industry as me but who had worked with me, helped me get pas this challenge. 

• I took on projects that forced me to really challenge myself about the characters having sex / a romantic relationship

My first implementation of this stage was with Jeremy in The Lover.   

Metatron’s Army.  Dealing with alien species has introduced its own challenges with relationships and sex and due to plot progression, I’ve had to cross that bridge with a number of characters from the Metatron’s Army Series.

As in Books 11, 12, and 13.

I’ve found that though I had an idea where things were headed, I needed to truly think it all through.

I had to really put myself in the various characters’ shoes and ask myself

• What are they thinking right now?
• What are they afraid of at this moment?
• What do they want to get out of this moment?
• What is their life going to be like individually and as a couple as a result of taking this step/crossing this bridge?
• How will other characters adapt and respond to this change in circumstance?

It has been quite the journey.  It’s also laid the foundation for bouncing between series and dealing with a variety of characters coming from a number of different backgrounds.  In other words, the experience has given me courage to tackle a number of plot and character twists that will come up in the following projects

• Dragon Core
• Ghost Games
• Paranormal Journeys

Stay tuned!

*I still can’t convince some people I don’t write from personal experience but…

I just can’t care anymore if the people know me or not.

It bleeds too much energy.

Sex is how we got here.  It’s a part of life and I write with life in mind.

I’m about to post a vlog that gives a bit of insight into the Port Gallatan series.

 

The FICTITIOUS location for the series.

The West Virginia part of that story has a bit of personal meaning, and is a great illustration of how having the paranormal AS reality in my life has played out.

In a way that went way beyond being a writer.

YEARS AGO, on October 12, I found myself in West Virginia.  Though a series of events that took place over that weekend were of a paranormal nature, it was the weekend itself – and the events that led up to it – that transformed my life.; a situation where the whole was far more than the sum of its parts.

• I was invited to come down and spend a weekend.

 

• I would drive down right after work on Friday and arrive very late.

I had had the WEEK FROM HELL so I can’t begin to explain the basket case I was when I arrived, nor how it felt to be swept into a loving embrace, accompanied by an assurance that I was welcome and I could leave it all on the front porch.

• There were no expectations

The individual who extended the invitation is one of the only truly altruistic people to ever cross my path.

• The house was over 200 years old.

Spending the night in a place that had been there when my country was birthed from a REVOLUTION FROM TYRANNY – at the hand of COMMONERS who dreamed of being free from the TYRANNY of King George III cannot be described nor manufactured in a factory.  Farmers – not trained soldiers – led by great men – won that war.

• The smell of cedar touched/connected with something from my Irish great-grandmother

My parents kept the quilts she handmade to keep out drafts from the walls of her home in Ireland in a cedar chest so the moths wouldn’t destroy them.

•  My host provided acceptance that healed parts of my soul in need of healing

 

• I was reminded of who I was at a soul level, reminded that corporate (and those in it) did not define me

Though God knows they tried.

• I was reminded that life is what I make it (No excuses).

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay the individual who invited me – nor fully explain what that weekend and those nights in that house did for me.

If you think those emotions and those experiences don’t make it into my characters and my writing – you don’t understand writers who write from the soul.  NOT EXPERIENCE – THE SOUL!!!!!  BIGGGGGGGG DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

So – the paranormal of that weekend.

We ventured to a park where there were a number of ghosts.

Story of my life since LONG before the brain surgery!

I tucked this part of the weekend into my normal “Wow, this is really cool…” space and went with it.

With regards to all the ghosts I saw on my way to the payphone?

I had to call someone to wish them happy birthday!

I believe in Democracy for ghosts.

Who am I to scream at them to go to the light when they are intelligent and capable of telling me off/explaining they are here for a reason?

If they weren’t? – they would have ALREADY gone to the damned light! 

 I’m serious.  They’re watching over loved ones or otherwise completing tasks and make no bones about telling me about it.

Paranormal experience aside, it was a turning point for me.

Did the ghosts play a part in that?  Not as much as staying in that house did.

Going Home.  I drove the PA then OH Turnpike, knowing I wouldn’t get back to MI until well past midnight, needing to report for duty to the corporate black hole early the next morning.

I was a completely changed person though I had no idea at the time just how much.

To give a perspective of the degree of dysfunctionality of our particular sinking ship…

 

• There was a sandwich board in the 1^stfloor hallway that read the difference between us and the Titanic was that at least the Titanic had a band

 

• There was a Far Side Cartoon with God looking at the animals and contemplating “Hmmm…pretty good – all I need is something to eat you guys…” on my boss’ office door.

With an arrow over God’s head that had the current black hole program name on it.  The animals?  There was an arrow with the name of our “sacrificial” team on it.

My boss was NOT amused.

I was NOT the orchestrator of this chaos!

Hey, at least we had a sense of humor while we were going down…

Scott Adams would have been proud.

YES – I know Scott Adams did not author the Far Side.

Around 11pm Sunday night, close to the OH-MI border, I checked my vmail.  There were a number of messages from someone who was another energy drain on my life.

Prior to the nights spent in that house – talking to the woman whose family had owned it for generations – I was somehow oblivious to the energetic damage being done by this psychic/emotional/psychological vampire.

By the time I was listening to the sixth – or seventh – vmail DEMANDING that I call him and tell him WHERE I WAS – I was rolling my eyes and acknowledging that my life needed some serious work.

Ghost to the Rescue!

Not long after, I had a visit from the ghost of my deceased maternal grandmother, reading me the riot act because my husband was about to come into my life and there was WORK TO BE DONE and there I was screwing around with a vampire!

Rattled by the dream – my maternal grandmother NEVER yelled at me – I nonetheless blew her off.

My mistake.

Immediately after, my life took a turn into a nightmarish if entropic direction.

It was as if someone yanked the tablecloth off the table of my life and every damned glass thing on it fell to the floor where it proceeded to smash to smithereens.

Those were some rough months afterward…

But as I recount in After Here: The Celestial Plane and What Happens After We Die, my husband DID enter my life a few months later.

The transformation – Cosmically Guided – was set in stone.

 The Paranormal as Reality Revisited…

I was reading an article the other day and considered where I was when this guy was blowing out an amp.

I was living in the Bay Area, seeing my husband-to-be in a vision on my Silicon Valley apartment balcony.  I actually asked him to wait – explaining I wasn’t ready yet.  This was BEFORE being chewed out, mind you.

Cosmic Time.  Upon reading the article, I realized that though it seemed like an eternity at the time – the actual space between when I saw my husband in that vision and when he showed up in my life was relatively short.

My grandmother’s admonition notwithstanding. 

The rapidness with which everything else was swept away once I touched his hand when we finally found each other?  It left me with no doubt that

• Destiny Exists
• Love is a powerful force
• Paranormal IS reality if you’re smart enough to look for it/see it.

On a side note:  Just before we were married, my husband took me to a place where he used to spend time during a difficult part of his life.  It was the exact location I’d seen him sitting in in the vision, though he was there two years – almost to the day – before I was in my apartment.

The speed of desire across time?

Just the information a storyteller loves to draw from.

I’m about to post a vlog that gives a bit of insight into the Port Gallatan series.

I’m about to post a vlog that gives a bit of insight into the Port Gallatan series.

The FICTITIOUS location for the series.

The West Virginia part of that story has a bit of personal meaning, and is a great illustration of how having the paranormal AS reality in my life has played out.

In a way that went way beyond being a writer.

YEARS AGO, on October 12, I found myself in West Virginia.  Though a series of events that took place over that weekend were of a paranormal nature, it was the weekend itself – and the events that led up to it – that transformed my life.; a situation where the whole was far more than the sum of its parts.

• I was invited to come down and spend a weekend.

 

• I would drive down right after work on Friday and arrive very late.

I had had the WEEK FROM HELL so I can’t begin to explain the basket case I was when I arrived, nor how it felt to be swept into a loving embrace, accompanied by an assurance that I was welcome and I could leave it all on the front porch.

• There were no expectations

The individual who extended the invitation is one of the only truly altruistic people to ever cross my path.

• The house was over 200 years old.

Spending the night in a place that had been there when my country was birthed from a REVOLUTION FROM TYRANNY – at the hand of COMMONERS who dreamed of being free from the TYRANNY of King George III cannot be described nor manufactured in a factory.  Farmers – not trained soldiers – led by great men – won that war.

• The smell of cedar touched/connected with something from my Irish great-grandmother

My parents kept the quilts she handmade to keep out drafts from the walls of her home in Ireland in a cedar chest so the moths wouldn’t destroy them.

•  My host provided acceptance that healed parts of my soul in need of healing

 

• I was reminded of who I was at a soul level, reminded that corporate (and those in it) did not define me

Though God knows they tried.

• I was reminded that life is what I make it (No excuses).

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay the individual who invited me – nor fully explain what that weekend and those nights in that house did for me.

If you think those emotions and those experiences don’t make it into my characters and my writing – you don’t understand writers who write from the soul.  NOT EXPERIENCE – THE SOUL!!!!!  BIGGGGGGGG DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

So – the paranormal of that weekend.

We ventured to a park where there were a number of ghosts.

Story of my life since LONG before the brain surgery!

I tucked this part of the weekend into my normal “Wow, this is really cool…” space and went with it.

With regards to all the ghosts I saw on my way to the payphone?

I had to call someone to wish them happy birthday!

I believe in Democracy for ghosts.

Who am I to scream at them to go to the light when they are intelligent and capable of telling me off/explaining they are here for a reason?

If they weren’t? – they would have ALREADY gone to the damned light! 

 I’m serious.  They’re watching over loved ones or otherwise completing tasks and make no bones about telling me about it.

Paranormal experience aside, it was a turning point for me.

Did the ghosts play a part in that?  Not as much as staying in that house did.

Going Home.  I drove the PA then OH Turnpike, knowing I wouldn’t get back to MI until well past midnight, needing to report for duty to the corporate black hole early the next morning.

I was a completely changed person though I had no idea at the time just how much.

To give a perspective of the degree of dysfunctionality of our particular sinking ship…

 

• There was a sandwich board in the 1^stfloor hallway that read the difference between us and the Titanic was that at least the Titanic had a band

 

• There was a Far Side Cartoon with God looking at the animals and contemplating “Hmmm…pretty good – all I need is something to eat you guys…” on my boss’ office door.

With an arrow over God’s head that had the current black hole program name on it.  The animals?  There was an arrow with the name of our “sacrificial” team on it.

My boss was NOT amused.

I was NOT the orchestrator of this chaos!

Hey, at least we had a sense of humor while we were going down…

Scott Adams would have been proud.

YES – I know Scott Adams did not author the Far Side.

Around 11pm Sunday night, close to the OH-MI border, I checked my vmail.  There were a number of messages from someone who was another energy drain on my life.

Prior to the nights spent in that house – talking to the woman whose family had owned it for generations – I was somehow oblivious to the energetic damage being done by this psychic/emotional/psychological vampire.

By the time I was listening to the sixth – or seventh – vmail DEMANDING that I call him and tell him WHERE I WAS – I was rolling my eyes and acknowledging that my life needed some serious work.

Ghost to the Rescue!

Not long after, I had a visit from the ghost of my deceased maternal grandmother, reading me the riot act because my husband was about to come into my life and there was WORK TO BE DONE and there I was screwing around with a vampire!

Rattled by the dream – my maternal grandmother NEVER yelled at me – I nonetheless blew her off.

My mistake.

Immediately after, my life took a turn into a nightmarish if entropic direction.

It was as if someone yanked the tablecloth off the table of my life and every damned glass thing on it fell to the floor where it proceeded to smash to smithereens.

Those were some rough months afterward…

But as I recount in After Here: The Celestial Plane and What Happens After We Die, my husband DID enter my life a few months later.

The transformation – Cosmically Guided – was set in stone.

 The Paranormal as Reality Revisited…

I was reading an article the other day and considered where I was when this guy was blowing out an amp.

I was living in the Bay Area, seeing my husband-to-be in a vision on my Silicon Valley apartment balcony.  I actually asked him to wait – explaining I wasn’t ready yet.  This was BEFORE being chewed out, mind you.

Cosmic Time.  Upon reading the article, I realized that though it seemed like an eternity at the time – the actual space between when I saw my husband in that vision and when he showed up in my life was relatively short.

My grandmother’s admonition notwithstanding. 

The rapidness with which everything else was swept away once I touched his hand when we finally found each other?  It left me with no doubt that

• Destiny Exists
• Love is a powerful force
• Paranormal IS reality if you’re smart enough to look for it/see it.

On a side note:  Just before we were married, my husband took me to a place where he used to spend time during a difficult part of his life.  It was the exact location I’d seen him sitting in in the vision, though he was there two years – almost to the day – before I was in my apartment.

The speed of desire across time?

Just the information a storyteller loves to draw from.

Just listened to Tinnesz and considered which scene I wanted to work on next in Adjudication: Book 13 in the Metatron’s Army series.

The songs are part ofa Verix playlist.  I have two. Each serves a different inspirational purpose.

Whew!  Book 13 is both a relief and a challenge.  Analysis: Book 12 was, by far, the most challenging of the series, for a variety of reasons.  It’s a relief to be past it and yet it’s a challenge because, with Adjudicationthe final book in the series, there’s a lot riding on it, not the least of which is, addressing open issues/questions.

Typing up bows – or not.

Do what works, not what’s popular.  I have never been a fan of formulaic writing.

Something created by a select few– mostly male – at the Big 5 in the 80s.

Happy ever after is one thing.  Tying up in a pretty yet very unrealistic bow – you’ve lost me.

You lost a number of people which is why there was a revolt in and around 2003 by – predominantly female – writers and agents alike.  New to the industry, I sat back and watched, listened, and learned.

Roll Up The Sleeves.  There are a number of outstanding issues and questions to address in the series and yet I can’t just go down a list, checking each one off.

Timing is only one of the considerations.

Best Way?  The techniques used can vary.  For instance, I realized while listening to music from Babelthat a reveal I was going to do by way of a flashback can actually be accomplished by reentering a scene and keeping it in the present.

For this particular reveal, I will adjust timing rather than character participation.

Timing.  I have to be careful.  I can’t just rush through this installment tying up loose ends as I go.

Hurried and unrealistic.

I also don’t want to lose the cadence of the saga by shifting gears at the end.

This consideration applied to the End Game in its entirety which was another reason Book 12 was such a challenge.

Not so fast.  Even though I’m coming up to the finale of the Metatron’s Army series first draft, there’s a lot of work to do.

And the challenge of having my next project in the works.

Stay tuned.

Diagonals:  Book 10 in the series will be available on April 1, 2019.

So, turned in final draft for Promotion: Book 11 in the Metatron’s Army series and working on Analysis: Book 12

Promotion is currently available for pre-release.  Officially available June 1, 2019.

I took the schedules of my team into account and decided the sooner I get book 12 ready to go the less stressful it will be for all of us.

Edit, edit, and more edit.  Though I continue to have to deal with past participles more than any other parts of speech*, I was amused to see an example of the nit picking that can happen during “final draft” editing.

Do I really need to “fix” this?**

The phrase in question is “No Light Being ever could have…”

I stared at it and pondered “ever could have” versus “could ever have.”  

Weirdly, it does make a difference. 

In keeping it “ever could have” I am drawing attention to the fact the Light Being in the scene is

Wow – I just caught a typo because I did a direct copy from the manuscript to this article – didn’t capitalize the L and B. 

In keeping the phrase as is, I’m drawing attention to the fact the Light Being in question is unparalleled relative to his peers.

In other words, if he couldn’t do it…***

This is the level of editing that goes on – for me at least – in final draft stage.

For me, final draft is the draft I turn over to the beta reader.  I do one last read through immediately prior to release just for sanity’s sake.  For book 11 that was yesterday.  It was uploaded today and will be live on time.

* I was able to let go of comma issues – issues set in place when my 5^thgrade English teacher decided the rule in place back when the abacus was the computer was set in stone.

** Stephen King does a great job of covering the BS involved with nit picking – including commas – in his work On Writing,,which I highly recommend to aspiring writers.  It’s the real.

***For a bit of insight into this passionate character…

Analysis will be available on or before August 1, 2019