And lo, Monday afternoon, I exchanged a few words with my editor, in which we counted on our fingers, looked at what remained to be done, and decided that July for Tiger Bound was just a leeetle too optimistic.

So that book is now an August baby, and my editor and I get to keep our sanity.

Except for the part where I run around my web site, blog, FaceBook, newsgroup, and Twitter, cleaning up after that July thing!

The Sentinels

Night of the Tiger (Bite): Dec ’11
TIGER BOUND: Aug ’12
KODIAK CHAINED: Dec ’12

Demon Blade
Demon Touch (Bite): Sept ’11
DEMON BLADE: ’13
DARK BLADE: ’13:

No, really.  I MEAN IT!

I wrote some Nocturne books and I delivered them.  And then I went on to the next books, waiting for the usual to happen–editing requests, production, scheduling.

They kinda didn’t.

And then there was a bit of chaos driven by editorial promotions and transition, and lo…some years later, just as the first book is at the point of being reverted back to me due to non-publication, I’m on the schedule!

For starters–and ironically, thanks to the shuffling, this title was scheduled about a year sooner than expected ( real surprise to me when it wasn’t even slated to be written until next spring)–and look, it’s almost time–!

Night of the Tiger

December ’11
Nocturne Bite e-novella
An installment in the Sentinels series

Nook
Kindle

Marlee Cerrosa turned unwitting traitor to the shapeshifting Sentinels, and Scott O’Brien paid the price. Now, with another traitor amongst them, Marlee hunts redemption, and Scott hunts what he lost…and it looks like they can only find the answers in one another.

=================

But wait!  There’s MORE!

The Sentinels: Powerful and Passionate Protectors of the Land

Night of the Tiger (Bite): Dec ’11
TIGER BOUND: Aug ’12
KODIAK CHAINED: Dec ’12

Demon Blade
Demon Touch (Bite): Sept ’11
DEMON BLADE: ’13
DARK BLADE: ’13:

So finally, I get to the very best part about writing:  the sharing!

Just makes me want to write more…

One of the things that annoys me about the critiques of the Romance genre is that it’s somehow trivial. As if love had not, in fact, given rise to empires or made them come tumbling down again. Maybe love is dismissed because it is often the interest of women, important to them–more important than battles. Or maybe it is because so many writers don’t understand that even when telling a love story, they’re telling a story about more than that.

Every story should have a theme–and ideally, more than one. In a romance novel, the overarching theme is a given: Love conquers all. That’s the argument. Everything you write in this story should support the premise that love overcomes all obstacles. That it is through love that our hero and heroine can get what they want. That’s the relatively easy part because the entire genre is built around this single theme.

But because it’s already built in, readers expect a second theme. And that’s where things get tricky. So what is a theme? ChuckWendig said it better than I ever could, but a theme is an argument that you’re making. It’s a thesis. Several themes of my most recent HQN Nocturne nove, Dark Sins and Desert Sands include: “War makes men into monsters,” “torture demeans both the tortured and the torturer,” “civilized nations ought to uphold laws even during wartime,” “women have a right to be sexy,” “women can’t and shouldn’t be owned,” “the human capacity for forgiveness is our salvation.”

Some of these themes are more controversial than others, but they’re all in there, and the story, the dialog, the plot…all of it works together to make an argument that supports these themes. So, did I set out with a list of arguments and then create a book around them? Not really. I had a central premise, but as the plot started to unfold, the underlying arguments started peeking to the surface. It was in the rewrite that I was able to uncover and expand upon my themes, which lends credence to my belief that there are no great writers in the world. Only great rewriters.

It’s in the editing that magic happens. Where you can spot the arguments in your subtext and use metaphors to hammer them home. So the next time you’re looking over your first draft, ask yourself what your book is trying to say. What fight is it picking? And if it isn’t saying anything at all, it might be time to put it back in the drawer and write something else.

*applause from the gallery!*

 Stephanie Draven is currently a denizen of Baltimore, that city of  ravens and purple night skies. She lives there with her favorite nocturnal creatures–three scheming cats and a deliciously wicked  husband. And when she is not busy with dark domestic rituals, she  writes her books.

Stephanie also writes historical fiction as Stephanie Dray  and has a series of forthcoming novels  from Berkley Books featuring Cleopatra’s daughter.

Stephanie’s Web Site

(Is that disturbing, to have that sentence first thing after that title, or is it just me?)

Either way, here we are.  Demon Touch is available as a Nocturne Bite!

Actually, they’re calling it a Nocturne Craving.  This comes under the heading of, “Don’t ask me!” and “The author is always the last to know.”

The Bites line is transforming into Cravings, but it seems that somewhere along the way–even though the flavor of the stories between these two lines is substantially different–all of the Bites have retroactively become Cravings.  Even the one I had published several years ago.  Hmm.  It’s magic?

And, well, hmm.  I was about to send you to my web site, where I’ve just updated the various pages to reflect this release, but I just discovered I was interrupted in the middle of those updates and…

Well, I wouldn’t bother looking for them just yet.  

Luckily (and quite by coincidence), here are all the pertinent details, right HERE!

Demon Touch

Ever since the night Alex Donally found the demon blade in his hand—and in his thoughts—he has been driven to fight evil.

When he meets Deb Marchand, he is compelled to protect her from her violent ex—and aroused by the visions of passionate encounters they both experience when they touch. The blade is showing them what they can have—if Deb can risk giving her trust and heart to a vigilante…

Kindle
Nook

I’d meant to have them all up by now, but that was before I expanded my own personal revolution into the Backlist eBooks project with partner Pat Ryan, and that’s required a massive amount of time, so…I’m about halfway through my various backlist books/stories.

When I started with the backlist, my focus was on creating a cover “look.”  You know…glance at the cover and instantly recognize it as mine.  I had a strategy and everything!

Well…the learning curve, it be steep.  It wasn’t too long before I realized my strategy was too restrictive, and shed it for new ideas.  Now my new covers have a new approach, and most of my old covers have been replaced–some by the aforementioned Pat Ryan (she of many talents), and some by my own self.  The change hasn’t propagated through all of the retail venues, but this is their doing, not mine.  *annoyed sniff*

When I put Fountane Of up for sale, I didn’t actually put it up for sale–I gave it away as a teaser, and didn’t worry too much about the cover.  Well, that all evolved, too, and currently Fountane Of is 99c like the rest of my short stories.  And LO.  It finally became time for a new cover, and that’s what fun I had this past weekend, in between the plumbing excitement moments.

Fountane Of

(That link?  It’s a peek at the new Backlist eBooks web site, and what all the book pages will look like when we’re done!  At the moment, we’re only just getting started)

I’m thinking Touched by Magic is the next project–I’m about halfway through it, and skipped over to get the non-series books done first.  Well, after I turn in the next Sentinels book, put the polishing touches on the new Nose for Trouble edition, launch the September Nocturne Demon Blade Bite, and get the Nocturne Sentinels Bite through production…

*runs away*

That would be Night of the Tiger, which will be out in December as a Nocturne Bite, and if you happen to read it you can be all smug and say, “Yes, this is the piece that preempted that August 8 blog.”

(What do you mean, that “so sad” was hardly convincing?  Huh?  Me, wallowing in first draft?  Surely not!)

I am not feeling particularly guilty.  More like…smug.

smug smug smug smug

To assuage my not-guilt over my not-blog, here is a picture of a puppy owning the Best Toy:

This is THE BEST TOY. Ever. For the moment.

What fun to start the week with babbling good news. I think next week I’ll MAKE UP some good new so I can do it again!

This week, though, I don’t have to. I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be writing three more Nocturnes, and two of the online Nocturne Bites along the way.

The Nocturnes are the ones I’ve gotten the most requests for so far…remember Maks, the straightforward bodyguard who’s played a role in all three of the Sentinels books so far? Maks takes the tiger as his other form; he’s a quiet guy with an unusual background. Not quite tame, for all his reliability–and with reason. The first Sentinels book is Tiger Bound, and that’s where I get to play with Maks’ story. Oh, gleeful, evil, rubbing of hands together!

Ruger is the character who first started getting the requests–right from the start. Was I ever going to write a book for him? Well, in fact…yes! Ruger is the healer who also spends time as a Kodiak bear, and who (in Lion Heart), took the brunt of an Atrum Core ambush. In the wake of that, he’s still looking for himself. Could be he just needs a little help, hmm?

But before I dive into those two books, I’ll be writing a second Demon Blade book. You haven’t seen that first one yet–it’s been waiting for scheduling, and to some extent waiting for this cycle of decisions to come around, to see if we’d be working it as a series or as a one-off. Well, guess what! I get to do a series!

And then there’s a Demon Blade Bite and a Sentinels Bite.

And there’s ME.

VERY HAPPY!

Getting to write books I love, knowing my schedule is planned for these next months, hummm hummm humm! The muse wins!

BLOG PARTEEEE!

Yes! It’s true! I have a genre auto-adjust function in my brain!

And it comes in REALLY handy. Because everything I write, I also read. (I mean…duh, right?) And without the auto-adjust, there might be some ugly genre gap issues.

Ug-LEE, I tell you.

Okay, not for mysteries–two of them so far for me. Easy to tell apart from the rest, and obvious what to expect.

The tie-in books…well, those are pretty much self-defined.

And the Bombshells. No question about that marketing. Kick-Ass Chick books. Jane Bond. Alias. Sums it up right there.

The confusing part?

The fantasies. The different flavors thereof.

SF/Fantasy vs Silhouette Nocturne category vs single title paranormal. All fantasy–but all entirely different.

With my first fantasy books–of the SF/F variety–I had a lot of freedom. Of course there were relationships in these books–our lives are made of relationships. But the books were structured around plot, and built primarily on worlds, magic, and character. I could and did hit from between 90K to 150K words.

The Silhouette Nocturnes are contemporary, relationship-driven category romance fantasies. World building and plot are vital–the pieces always have to be there!–but the book grows around the relationship. And the length is 70K words or less. That means the developing relationship takes priority over extensive world building and layered plot lines (and it means there are pages of Sentinel notes, history, and factoids that haven’t ever made it to print).

Single title paranormals–like those in the Reckoners series–are a blend of both worlds. They’ve got the world building, the relationship, the characters, the layering, and a whole cast of supporting characters. At 120k words, they’re crammed in tight!

But here’s where it gets tricky. Because the expectations formed by reading any one of these sibling genres won’t match the reading experience in the others. Picking up a fantasy won’t fulfill the yen for a relationship-driven story. Picking up a Nocturne won’t provide deep world building and multi-layered plots–and it’s not meant to. Picking up a paranormal single-title provides a great balance of both–but the specific focus of neither.

So picking up one of these genres and blaming it for not being like one of the others? Well, it feels odd to say this about fantasies, but…that’s not exactly realistic. Or, thank you (and here comes the opinionated part), fair.

In fact, the key to a happy read while genre-surfng turns out to be pretty basic. Know what you’re reading. Set expectations accordingly. Voila!

In which case it’s really handy to have an auto-adjust function.

Not all that far into Sentinels: Wolf Hunt….

Jet has been trained by the Sentinels’ dark counterparts for one mission: To take down Nick Carter.  Everything she’s been told in preparation has come through that Atrum Core filter.  But Jet can think for herself, and she has the strength to do just that.

(Have I mentioned how much I enjoyed writing Jet?)

===============

Quite suddenly she bent over, laying her face against his–nuzzling him ever so slightly. Just as suddenly, she straightened again. “I think he lies,” she said. “He will do to my pack what suits him, no matter what I bring him.” A gentle lift of his head and a flick of her hand, and she removed the amulet thong. “No more do I heed him. You, I help. And my pack…I save on my own.”Instantly, breathing seemed natural again. And if his body shuddered with waves of flame and ice, he nonetheless had his growl back.