Mar 20 2019

Blood Spell: a Fallen From Grace novel Cover Reveal

 

 

Are you ready for the next installment? Be on the lookout for Blood Spell: a Fallen From Grace novel – Before the Sun Rises Book 5 coming 4/22/19 with the highly anticipated follow-up novel releasing close to Halloween of 2019.

Thorn has been searching her whole life for The Book of Blood Magic. Now she has found it, and she is thrust into a primeval struggle where the laws of good and evil no longer apply.Once she speaks the ancient deity’s name, she is bound to him forever. No matter how far she runs, no matter what she does, she will never be able to escape him.His disciples want him free from his eternal exile to reclaim his throne and bring the earth back into the shadows of the magic realm. There is no way to undo her blood spell, but she is determined to keep their prophecy from becoming a reality.Can she live with herself if she draws him into her world, a world he has sworn revenge upon at any cost?Will he be content to merely live, or will his desire for blood and war cause him to once again enslave humanity? What will her world become if he is allowed to reign over them? If he cannot control his desire for chaos, will she be able to make the ultimate sacrifice?Time is running out, and she has a decision to make. No matter her choice, one thing is clear -someone’s world is going to end.

Mar 19 2019

The Art of Artistry – an Observation to the Norm

I’m a total music junkie. I tend to like metal/rock more than anything, although I do have some fave country artists in my playlist (Darius Rucker, Trace Adkins). Needless to say, I tend to follow a lot of bands across all my social media platforms. In doing so, something recently stuck out that I’ve not really noticed before.

When it comes to artistic ability, most people who are artistically inclined tend to be really good at a variety of creative endeavors. And from what I’ve observed, musicians tend to have it in spades. I’ve noticed most musicians can also sing, and a lot of them tend to be good at painting or drawing. Others I’ve noticed are good at creating unique products such as hand-painted signs, jewelry, etc. Some are also really good makeup artists or really good actors.

And then there’s me. I’m not good at much of anything outside of the writing biz. I can do some small arts and crafts (jewelry making, floral design, and little else), but I’m not musically inclined, I can’t sing, I can’t play a musical instrument, and I couldn’t paint or draw if my life depended on it. And honestly, from what I’ve observed from fellow writers, most of us tend to be this way. Some of us are getting into graphic art work for doing cover design, but from what I’ve observed we tend to be really good at one of them and mediocre at the other. Some are really good at marketing their books, some are really good at making graphic teasers and trailers. While this isn’t exactly considered an “art” form, it certainly takes a certain finesse to pull it off.

This is not to say that all writers are only good at writing, or that all musically inclined people tend to be more artistically inclined towards some other art form such as drawing or painting. This is, of course, just my own observation of what I’ve witnessed through observing other writers and musicians in my own social media circles. I’m sure there are plenty of writers out there who can sing, dance, paint, draw, doing phenomenal graphic artwork, etc. just as there are probably plenty of musicians out there who are not artistically inclined toward anything not music related. Again, it’s just an observation.

I, however, seem to be an all-around mediocre talent. It’s funny, I tend to tell people at my Evil Day Job that I’m a “Jack of all trades.” The rest of that old saying goes “master of none.” Today, that realization is really hitting home. I’m slowly coming to terms with it because being mediocre at anything in the artistic world, or the real world as far as that goes, doesn’t matter. There have been plenty of people who were successful with a “mediocre” idea, book, movie, song, etc. There are plenty of people who do mediocre work. It’s not the end of the world. To be honest, there are a lot more mediocre everything than there are truly phenomenal, and that’s okay too. It takes all kinds to make the world go round.

What I can say is I strive to get better every day at everything I do. With each new book, with each new book cover, with each new jewelry design, I will always strive to get better. We never stop learning, and I’m very thankful for that. I’ve always loved learning new things, trying new things, and evolving as a person and artist.

So, here’s to all my artistic brothers and sisters out there. Keep striving to be the best you can be. I know I will.

Mar 18 2019

Adventures at the Evil Day Job #106578

You take the good, you take the bad, you take my job, and there be hell.

Yesterday I had another one of those “what the actual fuck?” moments that was so strong, I literally thought my face was going to curl in on itself.

First, let me set the scene. I started at this place about eight years ago as a sales rep. Back, then we were expected to do everything ourselves. We had daily call quotas, daily quote quotas, daily/weekly/and monthly sales quotas, a contact quota. Then there was the quotes that had to be done, the vendor calls that had to be made, the revisions that had to be done, the call logs that had to be entered, and let’s not forget that we were required to spend half of the day in “call block” where we were not allowed to do anything but make outbound phone calls.

I have yet to figure out how someone with a degree in business management thought that calling a bunch of people who told you to stop calling them was a good idea.

And yeah, in case you are sitting there scratching your head thinking we sound like a bunch of telemarketers, that’s basically what we were.

Also, math didn’t work like normal math in this place. We were supposed to make 50 outbound calls a day. Under normal math, in 5 days that would be 250 phone calls. But this isn’t regular math, it’s work math, so we had a weekly call quota of 300 calls. So for those who do regular math, that’s actually 60 calls per day, but we were told 50. So 50 calls a day would keep your ass safe Tuesday-Friday, but come Monday if you didn’t 300 or more dials from the week before, someone’s ass was going to get chewed out.

Fourteen months into that shit-show, I’m sitting in the #2 overall sales position for the department, and yet I still got wrote up and threatened to be fired because my sales numbers weren’t where the VP thought they should be for my territory.

Facepalm? Yeah, no, screw that. There weren’t enough facepalms on the planet to get me to wrap my brain around that train of thought.

 

So anyway, you get the idea. After fourteen months I basically said either transfer me or cash me out because I’m done.

Enter the next seven years of my face looking like this:

 

 

Then yesterday comes around, and I’m sitting in yet another lengthy conference call with a bunch of people who make a whole hell of a lot more money than me. We are in the process of implementing a new way of getting project orders to order entry, and we get to the phase where the sales reps are going to do the following: instead of attaching their paperwork to an email and emailing it to order entry, they are going to attach it to a report database that goes directly to order entry.

The purpose: so all the paperwork that is flying around in emails will be accessible to everyone instead of just the person who received the email. It’s streamlined, all the documentation is now in one place instead of floating around a dozen different email accounts and files on computers, and when someone comes back six months later asking who made a mistake, we don’t have everyone digging around trying to figure it out because all the info isn’t in one spot.

Now, remember, the reps are already having to attach this crap to an email, write the email, and send all this into order entry to get their customer orders placed. We just took it from being all over the damn network and a bunch of different computers to all being in one set place.

Streamlined = saved time, saved money

And then these words come out of my manager’s mouth: “I don’t know who is going to be uploading all that but it won’t be the sales reps. Maybe someone in operations but the sales reps can’t be spending their time doing redundant tasks.”

But.

They already do this exact SAME. DAMN. THING.

Through EMAIL.

And so I left the meeting with my face once again looking like this:

 

Mar 15 2019

Movie Review – Velvet Buzz Saw

 

I recently kicked DirecTV to the curb and embarked on the streaming lifestyle. After all, if I’m going to pay nearly $200 a month on unlimited bandwidth and an internet connection that supposedly rivals NASA, I might as well get something out of it besides me working my butt off writing books. So, enter in Hulu, NetFlex, & Sling TV.

My love affair began with binge-watching LOST on Hulu, but quickly spiraled out of control into watching NetFlex original series and movies. I’ll be honest – I tried watching several NF original movies, but just couldn’t get into them for a variety of reasons: bad acting, bad plot line, flat characters – the usual.

However, Velvet Buzz Saw was one of those movies that, despite not being as riveting as The Haunting of Hill House, it wasn’t so bad that I had to stop watching it, like I did with The Rain. It was fairly interesting, had just enough action and suspense to keep me watching. It wasn’t exactly scary, more of a thriller than anything.

So here’s my take on it. The first thing it had going for it was the lead being played by Jake Gyllenhaal. I’ve seen this guy act in a lot of movies, and he seems to be pretty adaptable. Because of this, I was willing to give the movie a try. As usual, Jake did not disappoint. Out of all the characters I’ve seen him play, this one was probably about as “on the fringe” as his Brokeback Mountain persona. He plays the bi-sexual art critic Morph, a character that somehow managed to seem both high-strung and low-key at the same time.

Again, while the plot line was not riveting, it did have potential. I feel like maybe the movie failed to capitalize on what it had going for it. The death scenes could have most certainly been gorier. The beginning seemed to prattle on, almost losing me in the first twenty or so minutes. There seemed to be far too much dialog about art and corporate espionage and yet failing to really drive the entire thing home. The acting wasn’t necessarily bad as it was a bit more over-the-top. It really felt like the director was going out of his way to create a film that skirted all the major genres – horror, action, drama, thriller – in an attempt to be as blasé as possible.

As I said, it wasn’t so bad that I had to stop watching it, but it certainly could have been better. I feel if the director had actually chosen a genre and a rating and followed through, it would have been much better. But alas, all we ended up with was a mediocre film which made art seem both boring and dangerous.

I’d give Velvet Buzz Saw a solid 3 stars out of 5.

Mar 14 2019

#BitchPleaseIWritePorn

I recent kerfuffle via FB got me to thinking when a few authors who insisted they were not “elitists” because they took offense to some authors referring to some romance books as nothing more than word porn with little to no plot and shirtless abs on their covers. First, I’ve written both romance that had plenty of action (no, not that kind) and a hearty plot line, as well as the aforementioned “word porn”, complete with hot abs on the cover. And I’m here to tell you – I do not take offense to it. What I do take offense to are the authors who want to be offended. Like, who cares? Yeah, I write it, and my readers love it. Win-win as far as I’m concerned.

This is the very reason why I started the #BitchPleaseIWritePorn hashtag. I write it. I call it for what it is. I’m not ashamed. I own it like a boss.

Let’s face it. The simple truth of the matter is, “porn” is not a valid genre on Amazon. Trust me, it should be, but it’s not. For this reason, those of us who write such literary masterpieces as The Taming of Andy Savage have no choice but to improperly label our creations as “romance.” If “porn” was a valid genre option on Amazon as an actual book category, I’d slap up some of my stuff into it faster than you can say “holy abs, Batman!”

As I said, I do write the occasional piece of porn that has zero plot line. They’re fun, they are entertaining, and honestly, when you get down to the nut-cutting, people read “word porn” for the same reason they watch porn, and it’s not for the great acting and riveting plot lines. There’s nothing wrong with it. I write it, I read it, and yes, I watch it (hey, a girl’s gotta do research, right?).

To be honest, if I had to cut out all the action (yes, I do mean that kind) going on in the Sweet Seductions books, I’d have to rewrite so much of them they wouldn’t even remotely resemble the same book. They’re fun. They are written that way on purpose. And no, I don’t think they are some earth-shattering literary masterpiece that will change lives. They may make you laugh, they may get you a little hot under the collar. But earth-shattering they ain’t. As I like to say, you can dress a goat in a tuxedo, but at the end of the day, it’s still just a goat.

Bottom line, if your “romance” book had all the hot scenes removed and you would have to do some major rewrites, overhauls, and serious character development, then #BitchPlease, you write word porn, too. Don’t go getting all offended, girl. Own that shit. You know I do.