What would you do?

Right, what would you do?

Should I write the follow up book to Broken? (Second book of Immortal Souls series)

Write and finish Immortus? (Third book in Immortal Beloved series)

Write the book that goes with Banshee, A Touch of Raine the first book of the Blood Flux series. (For which I have a stunning cover, *drools*)

Begin and write my Desires Call series, Book One Awaken, Book Two Blossom, Book Three Lust, etc

Also, I'm contemplating writing two books in tandem to increase my productivity. Should I? Should I not?

Or should I ignore all of the above and get the hell on with writing? ;)

Help ME, Please.

Clockwork Princess has gone Live!

Clockwork Princess is Live on Amazon and Smashwords!

Garret, a cruel and twisted Lord, has his eye on Sophia. After he forces Sophia's father into agreeing to a terrible deal, he does not keep his end of the bargain.

Garret cannot resist taking Sophia for himself. And when he does, it has dire consequences for all involved.

A tragic fairytale romance.

Adult 18+ Steampunk Adult Romance

So I've been trying to stay away from the internet this weekend. I needed a bit of a break. However, as promised Clockwork Princess has been published. As I said before, this one doesn't have a typical HEA but I still think it's something you would enjoy.

UPDATE: Clockwork Princess

So I thought I'd do a small cover reveal for Clockwork Princess and give you the blurb. It is a little bit steampunk and a little bit on the erotic side but not too much. I view it more as a dark adult fairytale. Not the Disney kind. Think more along the lines of the original fairytales and you'll understand where I'm coming from.

It has the only HEA I could possibly have given it. I know some won't understand it and won't consider it to be a HEA. But if I'm honest there wasn't another way out of this. The story and characters are what they are and this was the only way to complete the story whilst staying true to them.

So without further ado... I give you the cover for Clockwork Princess a steampunk fairytale novella.

Coming Soon!

Garret, a cruel and twisted Lord, has his eye on Sophia. After he forces Sophia's father into agreeing to a terrible deal, he does not keep his end of the bargain. 

Garret cannot resist taking Sophia for himself. And when he does, it has dire consequences for all involved.

A tragic fairytale romance.

Adult 18+

Devotion and something a little different...

Just a quick post to let you all know that Devotion is done and published. Look at it, isn't it pretty :)

Book two in the Immortal Beloved series.

Tragedy has left Aisling distraught but she knows all is not lost. Help comes to her in a most unexpected form. Can she really trust what they offer or do they have something sinister in store for her?


The Hunters and the Croi are still at war. One side will emerge victorious but the fate of all hangs in the balance.


Love, obsession, betrayal, loss, and possession drive Aisling to the edge. Will she take a step too far? Is it really her choice?

I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The reason I haven't been blogging much is because I've gone straight into another project. And the title is... *DrumRoll* Clockwork Princess! I have the cover and it's very pretty :) This book is a slight departure from my normal stuff although in a way it's not.

For starters this book will be Adult only and will carry a content warning. I wouldn't define it as erotica but it certainly has erotic elements. It also has themes that some may find difficult. It's a book I've been mulling over for quite some time and then one day the entire plot just hit me. Well more than that I dreamt the plot. One night in bed all of it just fell into place, scenes, conversations, the whole nine yards. 

Writing it has been a very freeing experience. For a long time I think I was afraid to write something of this nature. I contemplated putting it under a pen name and hiding behind that but it just didn't feel right. In an odd way I felt as though I might be betraying my characters. So I'm biting the bullet and taking responsibility for my writing.

Florence, Dreams and Inspiration

I have the weirdest dreams. I know most people say that but seriously, mine actually impact on my day to day life... How many of you can say that, 'eh? Last night I dreamt I was carrying loads of Y.A angel books upstairs in my house in a giant metal box and this gave me a pain in my shoulders and arms... When I woke up I had pain in my shoulders and arms... Weird or what. Well it's not actually that weird I have a really bad back at the minute that stems from a work injury and yeah its messed me up big time.

But why would my brain decide to make me dream of something that would give me pain? Where did it come from. In fact why was it Y.A angel books in a giant metal box? Why books at all why not something else equally odd but more akin to pain causing? anyway the rest of the dream was whack-a-doodle and had nothing to do with anything. I did have a point with this post and then got distracted.

I watched the video for Florence & the Machine's song Never Let Me Go as per usual it is amazing. I'm not sure I fully understand it but it is beautiful and very inspirational. Too inspirational *shakes fist at Florence*. It makes me want to get cracking on another series of books I have planned for release this summer. I'm not going to say what they are about but the name of the series is Desire's Call. I've mentioned it before and this song makes me want to get stuck into it. But I'm being very good and dedicated and staying on track with the Immortal Beloved series. Devotion is looking at a release this weekend and Immortus is currently under construction. I have some fun things planned *YAY*.

I'm really excited about releasing Devotion more so than any other book I've released. For the reason that it is the second book in a series... This is new territory for me. I know I have Lissie but they are shorts and these are novels and it just makes me happy.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. I'll save my other post for tomorrow. Out of curiosity anyone else have dreams that are crazy/impact on your life when you wake up?

Thoughts, comments, and opinions are welcome :)

Here's the song with the video. *sigh* Florence Welch is amazing!

Bilinda

Women on T.V criticised for not fitting into the "Idealised Beauty" category.

I read an article yesterday that really got my goat. It was written by Mary Beard a highly intelligent and well respected woman (or at least she should be.) She was writing this article in response to a television reviewers critique... Here comes the part that really bothered and irritated me. The critique this particular  donkey gave was not about her new show Meet the Romans but instead on the way she looked. Below is a quote from her article in the Daily Mail.

"To be honest, at first reading, his remarks were pretty hurtful. He suggested that I should be kept away from the cameras altogether and, in a topical reference, went on to imply that I belonged on The Undateables, a recent Channel 4 programme charting the dating difficulties of the disabled and facially disfigured."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2134146/Too-ugly-TV-No-Im-brainy-men-fear-clever-women.html#ixzz1t3iwxSMT

Can someone explain to me when did it become acceptable to criticise women on t.v based on their appearance and suggest if they didn't fit into the "male view of what is attractive" that they shouldn't be on t.v? Why is it that women have to look like something from the cover of a glossy magazine but men can look like hobbits? I honestly don't understand this? Do we really still live in such a backwards society that this is the type of thing we can expect?

Mary Beard is an attractive woman. She is comfortable in her own skin and is good at her job. So why does her appearance have anything to do with the job she does? Why as women do we all have to look a particular way in order to be acceptable for television? I'm tired of it being one rule for women and another for men. I'm not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination but I believe in equality.

For me Mary Beard and the way she handled the situation has just lifted my opinion of her even higher than it was before. I'm not sure I'd have been so calm :)

What are your thoughts on this? Should women have to conform to a standard of idealised beauty whilst men can look however they want? Thoughts, comments, opinions welcomed.

Bilinda.

Writers at War- Traditional vs Self-Published. Why are we fighting?

Why are we fighting?

I'm an indie writer. You already know that. I'm proud of what I do and I know many others are too. However the one thing that grates on me is the assumption that because I am indie my work is of lesser value than something traditionally published. Don't worry I'm not here to have a go at traditional work. I read traditional books as much as indie ones. Whichever camp you fall into is up to you. At the end of the day what you do with your manuscript is your choice. If you want to submit it to publishers and agents by all means go ahead. Likewise if you want to self-publish then do that. (*Note- If you are going to self-publish please do a professional job on it. None of this slap-dash thrown together crap.) Alternatively some people just want to write for themselves and when it's done they put it in a drawer and it never sees the light of day. That's cool by me too. Whatever floats your boat.

I'm tired of the Us-VS-Them mentality. Self-publishers shouting how theirs is the only route and that everyone who is traditionally published are morons who don't know what is best for them. In the same way those who are Traditionally published spend a lot of time dissing the self-published. Usually with the line "well they had to self-publish it because no agent/traditional publisher would touch it because it was soooo bad!" There also tends to be a lot of "Traditional books = Quality. Self-Published = Crap." I'm going to do a little bubble bursting here. A book that is Crap is Crap no matter how it was published. There are bad books traditionally published and bad books self-published. Shocking, I know. As an indie I'm not meant to say that. But I did and I guess the cat is out of the bag.

What I don't like is the people who self-publish simply to make a quick buck. They throw something together, the cover is terrible, the plot is non-existent, blurb is like something a 3 year old scrawled etcetc and it is put on Amazon for .99 cents. This then becomes the yard stick that all self-published books are measured by. That SERIOUSLY pisses me off.

I work my ass off on my books. I want to give my readers the best possible product. I care about my stories and my characters. I love the first spark of an idea that catches in my mind. I love watching it grow and expand slowly taking over all other aspects of my brain until I can think of nothing but the idea. Usually that is when I want to kill it because it normally happens when I'm working on something else. I adore dreaming up concepts for my covers. Planning what my characters should look like and then torturing my cover artist until he captures, as close as possible, the image in my head. I dream about my characters. In every aspect of my day there is not one moment when I'm not thinking, planning or plotting something. This makes me a writer and I'm a good writer. (I know I'm not supposed to say that but I hate people who fish for compliments by putting down their own work. I believe in what I write, end of.)

So, if I am a writer who self-publishes and you are a writer that traditionally publishes what makes us so terribly different apart from the route we chose? If you care about your work and take pride in it just like I do why are we on opposing sides?

I would love to hear your opinions on this. Why do you think there is such a war? Do you agree/disagree? How can we change it? Or will we ever?

Comments, discussion and thoughts are always welcome.

Bilinda