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Tag: Lone Wolf

Weekend Writing Warriors 9/22/13 #WeWriWa

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First, I apologize for the misplaced menu above. I’ve been trying to update my blog, but between a school project and going out of town this weekend, I ran out of time. Grrr.

I’m continuing on with my soon-to-be-released women’s fiction novel, The Lone Wolf, out December 2nd from Evolved Publishing.

After her husband’s infidelities are revealed, Kasey Sanford just wants to rediscover who she is. After an abusive childhood and years as a career soldier, Andrew Adams just wants someone to tell him that he’s doing the right thing with his life. When their paths cross, Kasey and Andrew embark on a tumultuous journey that demonstrates just what they’re willing to do to save the ones they love.

Last week, Kasey arrived home to find pictures of her husband in bed with another woman. In this scene, he’s just arrived home from work.

I pulled away and thrust the letter and pictures at him. Trying not to shake, I said in as level a voice as I could manage, “Someone stuck these in the door today.”

His brow wrinkled, then his eyes widened as he read the letter and saw himself in the photos. Surprise was conspicuously absent; he’d known I would find out, knew of the woman’s ultimatum.

That realization channeled my jumbled emotions into pure rage.

“What’s going on, David?” I asked in a voice as smooth and deadly as ice.

He glanced at me, then looked away and sat down on the couch. He was thinking hard, going into lawyer mode with himself as the defendant this time, weighing his words against the truth and what I’d believe; it meant he was hiding more. 

Want to read more? Sign up for my publisher’s newsletter in the next week, and you’ll get a 5 chapter sneak peek! (And sign up for my newsletter too – link over there on the left – for updates and giveaways – plenty to come as the launch approaches!)

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

Weekend Writing Warriors 9/15/13 #WeWriWa

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I’m going to be switching gears here, from A Handful of Wishes, my WIP about a boy and his genie, to my soon-to-be-released women’s fiction novel, The Lone Wolf, out December 2nd from Evolved Publishing.


After her husband’s infidelities are revealed, Kasey Sanford just wants to rediscover who she is. After an abusive childhood and years as a career soldier, Andrew Adams just wants someone to tell him that he’s doing the right thing with his life. When their paths cross, Kasey and Andrew embark on a tumultuous journey that demonstrates just what they’re willing to do to save the ones they love.

In this chunk, Kasey has just arrived home from running some errands.

As I stepped onto our front porch, an envelope tucked in the front storm door caught my eye—no return address, no postage, just Mrs. Sanford scrawled in messy feminine handwriting. I picked it up, opened it, and pulled out the contents: a letter, wrapped around several photographs. I smiled at the quaintness; who printed out pictures anymore when they were just as easy to email?

I set the letter aside and studied the photos. Their low-quality fuzziness indicated they’d been taken with a webcam, but I could still clearly discern two people intimately engaged. As I focused on the images, my smile faded. One figure was David; although his face wasn’t visible in the photos, after almost ten years together I’d have recognized his stocky frame anywhere.

The other figure, the female, was not me.

Want to read more? Sign up for my publisher’s newsletter in the next week, and you’ll get a 5 chapter sneak peek! (And sign up for my newsletter too – link over there on the left – for updates and giveaways – plenty to come as the launch approaches!)

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

The Lone Wolf cover

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cover design by Mallory Rock

The cover is done, and line editing is underway. Plus today the official product page is up over at Evolved Publishing.

The synopsis:

When her husband David’s infidelities are revealed, shattering the perfect life Kasey Sanford thought they’d created together, it’s a wake-up call that she’s lost herself along the way. She demands that David move with her to a new town, to a fresh start for their life together.

Kasey loves the freedom of reinventing herself, including her new friendship with police officer and soldier Andrew Adams. Andrew is handsome and charming, and his interest in Kasey awakens feelings she’d rather have for her husband, who pushes her further away with each of his alcohol-fueled outbursts. Intent on preserving her marriage for the sake of her young daughter, and with no one else to confide in, Kasey turns to Andrew for support.

But Andrew’s own life is falling apart as he’s put on standby for another deployment, triggering painful memories he’d rather ignore. He’ll do anything to forget the soldiers who didn’t return home with him, his stillborn son, and all those he’s disappointed, including God.

As their relationship grows, Kasey must decide if she will repair her marriage and remain with the man she’s always loved, or if she will give up everything she holds dear to save the soul of a man she barely knows, a man who fights her at every step, a man desperate to regain his faith in God, in humanity, and in himself.


Four months until The Lone Wolf is released on December 2nd. I’m so excited!

Midyear writing goal review

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Every three months or so, I like to post how I’m progressing on the goals I set for myself in January.

  1. Publish my novel, The Lone Wolf.  I can cross this off because it’ll be out December 2nd, 2013, from Evolved Publishing. Yay me!
  2. Average a short story acceptance each month, with the majority of them in paying markets.  This has not been going so well. I’ve only had one acceptance so far this year (to a token market), “Us, Together” in Fiction365. Okay, two maybe if you count “The Business Trip” reprinted in Free Flash Fiction‘s anthology, The Flashing Type. However, I haven’t really been sending any shorts out. I wrote a bunch for May’s Story-A-Day, so maybe I can get some of those out soon.
  3. Put out a short story collection.  Yes, did this too! I released Us, Together: A Short Story Collection about a week ago. And I’m currently working through edits on another one, The Futility of Loving a Soldier, which should be out – let’s just say soon.
  4. Get another novel ready to query – either 2012’s NaNoWriMo novel, or the one I’ve been working on for a couple years, A Handful of Wishes. I haven’t had a chance to work on this, but I’ll be getting my butt in gear soon because I promised my editor I’d have A Handful of Wishes to him by April 2014 so it can be published December 2014.
  5. Read 100 books this year. I’m currently at 43. I should be at 49 by now, but considering how busy I’ve been with school and work and writing and my kid, I’m not doing too bad.
  6. Kayak the entire length of the Hennepin Canal.  Still no job, so still no kayak to do this. And no time to do it either. Maybe I can do small pieces as part of some weekend adventures later this summer?

If you’ve set goals for yourself, how’re they going so far this year?

An example of genre-hopping that works

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Recently I’ve heard quite a few writers concerned with genre-hopping. Many agents and publishers discourage it; if you want to write different stories, you write under different pen names. It keeps your fans compartmentalized – for example, the romance fans don’t have to read sci-fi they may dislike – but it’s harder to build that elusive platform, as you’re essentially building two (or more, depending on how many pen names you go with).

So, can you be successful as a genre-hopper? My publisher, Evolved Publishing, has no problem with it (they’re leniently awesome about a lot of other stuff too).

And in the past few months, I’ve come across a really good example: the band Imagine Dragons.

At first, I wasn’t big on them. “It’s Time” is a blatent rip-off of Sigur Rós’s “Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur,” a song I happen to love but most people have probably never heard. “It’s Time” is fun, hopeful, light. It’s played on most Top 40 radio stations.

And then I heard “Radioactive,” which is not really fun or hopeful or light. And it’s played almost exclusively on rock stations.

Intrigued, I got their album, Night Visions (and I highly recommend you do too). It’s a mix of light pop songs, dark rock songs, and some Caribbean steel drums that conjure up memories of the lobster from The Little Mermaid. And the mix is working, because their debut album has gone platinum in the US (1 million+ albums sold).

I think part of their success is their marketing approach: target pop people for the pop songs and rock people for the rock songs, each of whom will buy the whole album and probably enjoy it.

The lesson for writers, I guess, is that you need to cast a wide net. My novel, The Lone Wolf, is women’s fiction and I’ll market it towards women’s fiction writers, but chances are they’ll enjoy my other stories when they read them (or at least buy them). Readers who enjoy my darker short stories will buy the novel and appreciate some of the darker characters. I hope.

What’s your take on genre-hopping and marketing: good or bad? Why?

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