Haus of Rhi

As though winter isn't rough enough most of the time, this year Mercury went into retrograde for the entire month of February, and of course, oriented in Pisces. That's my constellation, the one that resonates with me the most--I'm technically an Aquarius/Pisces cusp, but when it comes to art, and writing, the Piscean in me comes to the fore. (The Aquarian side I save mostly for forced social interactions.) At any rate, February was a big fat bust. The most I managed to write on any given day was 100 words, when words came at all. Oftentimes just that much took hours to accomplish. Yet life is cyclic in so many ways, and Mercury relented at last. I could almost feel  the floodgate giving way, the surge of words scourging away the residue built up by weeks of frustration and headdesking. Of course, the parameters of my upbringing demanded this sort of pagan resonance receive disbelief and an "evil" label, so despite the years and distance between us, I still dou...

*clears throat* Drum roll, please. In a three-way tie for first place, Dark Edge of Honor. My thanks to Aleks Voinov the Best Co-Author Ever (and CONGRATS too, Darth Vader -- you rock), Deb Nemeth the Editor of Awesome, and all the very professional staff at Carina Press. Cue the Snoopy Dancing, Streamers, Confetti Parade and Sundry Noisemakers.

Another "Dark Edge of Honor" giveaway! In case you missed your chance last week and want another stab, the benevolent Vivien Dean is holding a giveaway on her blog. Click the link above and leave a comment to enter. Giveaway ends 9 a.m. on Monday, 29 August. Open worldwide. *warnings* This book is a dark and gritty military science fiction novel, in addition to being a gay romance. It includes scenes of torture, dubious consent, and violence involving the main characters. You must be the age of consent in your country to receive the prize.

I'd just like to say that it was thrill enough to see my and Aleks' book on the top of the "Most Popular" list weeks before its release. That alone was, to be honest, more than I'd dreamed of. But two days after, to have it sitting on the top yet again... I am humbled by the volume of attention this implies. From Aleks' fans, and others. Thank you. Seeing DEoH on that list will not get old, let me tell you. Curious to see how long it will stay  there, myself. Anyone willing to place some wagers? What are the odds? I'm not ordinarily the betting sort, to be honest. But I do love numbers. And I've no sales stats to play with, so I'm totally twiddling my thumbs right now. *twitches* Right. Like I don't have other stories to write, yeah? *laughs* Okay, I'll stop wishing for statistical data that I don't have access to, and sales figures that I can't have, and go back to what I get paid for. Giving Good Book. Oh, and all th...

DEoH is released for purchase, in both e-book and audio formats. I was so happy, I forgot to make a blog post yesterday. I spent the morning sleeping in, actually and by the time I rolled out of bed, I think my co-writer was starting to think the world really was  flat and I'd fallen off the edge and would never be heard from again. I made up for it by popping in on his fan-group chatroom and gabbing with the fans for a bit. And I still have no understanding of what algorithm this "Most Popular" list on Carina's website uses, but DEoH is sitting in second place. Page views? Purchases? I'm actually dying to know how they calculate that list ranking *lol* Kind of a "yeah my book's on there, but what's it mean? " sort of reaction. I'm looking forward to seeing the reactions and reviews of readers trickle in as they finish reading. Will be interesting to see. And I'm going to make an attempt at writing, later today, after I get this ...

I'm taking all of next week off from my regular day-job so that I can celebrate DEoH's release-- Snoopy-Dancing and Grinning Like an Institutionalized Loon. Without scaring the customers. It's not really  a vacation, because I'm still working, after a fashion. If it were a real vacation, I wouldn't be staying at home, that's for sure. If I could take a real  week's vacation, I'd be here: Best View Ever, Bora Bora Hammock. However, I'm not. I'm in my little writer corner all week long, availing myself to fans and readers and bloggers and such, doing all the marketing and promo stuff that a good little author does. [Yes, Good Little Author. Pat me on the head and give me a cookie now!] But I think I'll keep this picture handy. As my desktop background or something, perhaps. Because, woohoo, that's gorgeous ain't it? They have restaurants with extreme al fresco dining, where the tables and chairs are in the water. One d...

Mike is my character from the soon-to-be-released 'Dark Edge of Honor.' I’ve been acquainted with a number of different veterans and soldiers through the years, but there was one specifically—a person I don’t know, and never met—that sparked the beginnings of this story and was the avatar of the spirit behind him. Late in 2009, I stumbled rather deliberately upon the website of photojournalist Michael Yon and delved into the dispatches from his 2005 embed with deployed troops in Iraq. One of them stopped me in my tracks. Entitled “Gates of Fire,” (click here for the link to Yon's full dispatch) it recounted an incident involving the Deuce Four’s Lt. Colonel Kurilla and Command Sergeant Major Prosser which Yon witnessed, camera in hand.

Extra-moist cream cheese banana bread, Mahogany dark roast spiced w/ cinnamon & cloves. And this morning's transcribing task! Today's agenda will revolve around a number of activities: edits and writing for the Gunporn submission sequel, and outlining some promo requests and content ideas for the release of DEoH. Less than a month now! Starting to get a bit excited again. Eager to drum up some awareness, and also to see what sort of reception and reaction it gets from readers. And because I enjoy taking pictures to share here, I might decide to make Food Porn w/ Jan a regular feature. I'm off to *omnomnom* that banana bread. Aren't you jealous? I'd share, but the internets don't work so well like that. Not yet. Pity, though. It's delicious! Have a lovely hump-day for your week, I intend to be productive!

Um. TADA!!! (Can't really think of much useful to say.)

Copyedits for FOAT came and went rather swiftly. The prose is, apparently, as squeaky clean as a brand new car right off the lot. Most of the flagged issues were ones that ended up being declined alterations on style grounds. Both Aleks and I tend to use punctuation properly in dialogue, as well as elsewhere, and I find it almost funny that a question given the cadence of a statement would by default require a question mark as punctuation instead of a period. The nuances of spoken language are what defines a character, a mindset, an emotional state, for the reader's benefit. You change those to parallel predefined standards, and all the sudden the life is sucked out of the characters, the depth depleted from the prose. It is those little things, those nuances, that create the quality of the story, when combined in the final product. My 35-pound lapdog almost gave me a heart attack yesterday. He tends to curl up in the footspace beneath my desk in the writing corner while I...

Like, big cheeseburger-eatin' LOLcat grin. Editor sent back FOAT for round three tweaks. This is the last of it. From here on out it'll be all line edits and typos. She was absolutely ecstatic with the way Aleks and I reworked the ending/plot climax & resolution. It's a much stronger story for the changes, Just some minor content changes to be made... and we're still a couple weeks to the good. Creating a hard copy of Black is turning out to be my saving grace. Actually reading  it on paper seems to be resolving the issue I was having reading it on the screen. Mainly, I couldn't remember what was actually in the story, and what had been there versus what I'd altered. It was all... getting muddled. This is the "cleaning pass" read. Red pen in hand. I don't understand where the lack of clarity was coming from, but this is working much better than I even hoped for. I can see where the development tweaks need to be, and after reading it this wa...

Some time back before Christmas, Carina had emailed the official contract to Aleks and I to be signed and returned to them. From London to Pennsylvania took roughly one month. The editor was stressing out a little bit, trying to figure out if we were just being spastic. Under normal circumstances, the transit shouldn't take more than a week. Under normal circumstances, it doesn't. But holiday glut, and less than optimal weather on both sides of the Atlantic put a substantial crimp in the travel time. All's well that ends well, though, and yesterday I received an email notification that the release date was officially set for August 15th, which means they've received and countersigned the contract. I expect I'll receive my copy some time in the next week or so. In the meantime, we're still hammering away on the second round edits, which are demanding a heavy rewrite to the final couple chapters of the book. I'm confident that it'll be done long bef...

But for good reasons! I swear! Black's "Meet The Muse" interview is on hold, for the moment. Mostly because I have someone who would like to perform the interview, and the prospect of sinking into character for the conversation is a great idea. I'm eager to try it and see what comes of that approach. And finding the time for that...well. It's going to have to wait a little bit. The line edits for FOAT came in a couple days ago, and everything is taking a back seat to getting a handle on this. Getting it under control, making sure the alterations that need done are plotted and manageable, and making time to schedule the tandem writes with my partner in crime. Those things have priority. I'm discovering that I'm one of those writers who can have many active projects on my desk, but can only work on one of them at a time. It was that way with the trunked novel. It was that way during Black's formative years. And it was that way with FOAT. Each proj...

A four-week interval for edits and rewrites to a 93k manuscript. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm trying not to dwell on the time constraints beyond that which is required to actually reach the deadline in a timely and appropriate fashion. Preferably ahead of it, yes? The biggest points in the process revolve around altering character behavioral responses in the latter part of the story, and altering plot development to trigger greater conflict from said character. In other words, someone needs to put up more of a fight. Which is, inherently, what soldiers are born, bred, and trained up to do...so I'm fine with that. It did a world of good, not looking at the story for a few months. The prose is "fresh", so to speak. I can see the errors, the rough spots, without executing excessive headdesk maneuvers. Sadly, I think my 40 hours of free Pandora will be exhausted before the deadline is acquired. I like the high energy of the trance genre station a g...

Been waiting  for roughly ten days to hear back from the publisher regarding deal sheet. Waiting rather impatiently, I might add. Then again, I don't have patience for my own tendency to procrastinate. So... Deal sheet came today, though. Yay! Giddiness all over again. I spent the past week in a dreamlike limbo, the mindset of "You were imagining things, Rhi! You dreamed it, vividly. It wasn't real."  It was impetus to keep me working on other projects. Keep me writing, editing. Keep that giddiness momentum going, ride it as long as possible. Yes, I know. That logic has a distinct rational flaw. It's okay. It worked. That's all that matters. Deal sheet, though! Haha, take that you devious psyche.  The vivid dreams are never the ones I remember. If I'm lucky. I stumbled over a few of the details in the deal sheet, though. Found myself reconsidering the prospect of locating an agent. I'm not going to do it right this moment; the contract detai...