Great, now I’m going to have the Queen song in my head all day. Well, at least it’s this one and not another — which shall not be named because then THAT will be in my head and I’ve already lived through that. Don’t want to do it again. Anyway. . . .

Those of you who have been kind enough to follow the relaunch of my personal blog know I’ve been posting snippets from the third novel in the Nocturnal Lives series. Nocturnal Interlude is a bridge story. By that I mean it is taking the main character, Mackenzie Santos, and the rest of the supporting cast in a direction they aren’t sure they want to go. They may not want to go that way but it is something they have to do, at least if they want keep themselves and those they care about safe. For some of them, it means breaking rules they’ve been brought up to respect. For Mac, it means stepping into a role that is a very uncomfortable fit. But it’s a role she knows has to be filled, like it or not.

I’ll admit I’ve been uncertain about how this book would go over. (Stop laughing, Sarah. I know I’m ALWAYS uncertain but I’ve been even more uncertain with this one.) The main reason is that it is different, in some ways, from the first two books. It is darker, in my opinion, and every action Mac and company take has the potential to blow up in their faces. If it does, not only will Mac’s career as a cop be over but the existence of shapeshifters in a world that believes them to be nothing but the product of myth and bad Hollywood movies will be revealed. That has to be avoided at all costs, at least for the moment.

This is the world that’s been living in my head for the last few months as I wrote and then edited the book. It’s been about six weeks since I finished the final draft and my round of edits. In that time, it’s made its round of the first readers. It has also been sent to a friend I Tuckerized in the book who gave it a thumbs-up. (By the way, Chris, you’d better be writing.) And in the next 24 – 48 hours it will be live on Amazon as an e-book and shortly thereafter will be available in print.

So now that it has been put to bed, it is time to move on to the next project. Right now, I have two works-in-progress that are vying for my attention. So this may be the time when I do something I haven’t done since Sarah finally applied the pointy boots to my posterior — I may work on two projects at once. At least until one of them takes control. The only problem with that is one is light and not so fluffy and will come out under the pen name and the other is space opera (again, I blame Sarah. This began as a challenge from her to try something different.)

All the above is why my head is scattered today. My brain has decided it wants to go on vacation even if my body won’t take it anywhere. Maybe another gallon or two of coffee will help. For now, if you’d like to see snippets from Nocturnal Interlude, you can follow the links below over to my personal blog.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Also, if you’ve considered joining Scribd and checking out their subscription model for downloading books, here are a few of my thoughts on the service. While subscription services are quite possibly one of the new models of the sales arm of publishing, I’m not convinced the Scribd model is the way to go, at least from the author’s perspective.

I’ll be back next week with a more cogent post, I promise.