 News & Announcements:
I've been writing. At times, it's been sporadic, but I'm trying to keep my word count up most days. I've just finished the first draft of Fallen: Drug War (Book 4), and I've included an excerpt from one of the chapters. I hope you like it. Now that the Hubbs is back to work, I've been trying to get into a routine again. It's not easy! I got out of the habit of doing the grocery shopping and let him do it. Now I find myself trying to keep track of what we have, what we need, a tentative menu, etc. I hope to plan a new short story to accompany these novels, but it will be for the website. Most likely, the main character will be Sam, but we'll see. It could just as easily be Zach. Or their sister, Kristiel. Not real sure yet, as I haven't come up with an idea for it yet. But I do want to write one, so we'll see what I can come up with. I'll probably start on that in August, but I'll start pre-planning before then. Once I've got it in the works, it will be easier to get on with it after I finish the novels. I'm going to start revising and editing "Gabriel," too. Since it won't be my main focus for a while, I'll work it in as I have time. I'm not going to burn myself out trying to get it done quickly, but I want to have it posted sometime in August or September, so be watching for it. In the meantime, happy reading! Lois
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 Photo courtesy of Unsplash, user Kenny timmer News & Announcements:
I've been writing, but I haven't posted an update since December. I was without my computer for over a month, so I had to use a super slow mini laptop. It took forever to load most pages, and there was no way I could post here from that. I've since built a new computer and writing is much less frustrating. So, I'm back! :D I did write during that time, but since my computer was a chrome book (or Chromium book, since I installed Chromium over Windows), I was able to write using Evernote. I got my word count each day using wordcounter.net, and sent my writing to myself so I'd have an additional backup. I also saved my work to Big Huge Labs Writer: The Internet Typewriter. Evernote runs much better on the super slow chromebook than a lot of other things, including my website editor. Now that I'm back, I've got a new excerpt for you-- a chapter from the book I'm writing. It's only the first draft, so it will change a bit, but I thought you might enjoy it. I've also added a new freewrite to the Freewriting page: Khamael: A Magical Cabin Freewrite. It's romance, but it's clean. It's just an idea I'm playing around with (the magical cabin idea). I'm currently working on a short story I'll be adding to the site soon. It's related to the Fallen stories I've been writing since November. If you want a taste of the Fallen storyverse, check out the short story, The Hellhound, I wrote for this past Halloween. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. For now, my plan is to post every other week. This way, I can better edit and proofread the excerpts and freewrites I include in my entries. I'd rather offer a quality reading experience than to rush a piece out that's riddled with typos and misspellings. In any event, happy reading! Lois  News
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a good one here. We had my Hubby's dad and stepmom over for dinner in our little, itsy bitsy house. Then we went over to my son's house to hang out with him for a bit. All in all, it was a good day. I had three days of no writing this week, but I've done well, despite this, as you'll see immediately below. I hope you're all staying cozy, and that your spirits are high this holiday season. For myself, I'm trying to have as many koselig evenings as possible! Happy reading! Lois  Photo courtesy of Annie Spratt via Unsplash.com. News
First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving. My next post won't be until the day after, so I thought I'd get that in now. I hope you have a warm, cozy, fun-filled holiday. I've been taking it a little slower this third week of November/NaNoWriMo, but I'm still writing. Just not pushing myself. My hands have begun to hurt a little, so I need to take it easy. You can see my daily word counts, along with the novel's total word count, below. Otherwise, I've finished reading Russell Blake's Black In The Box. Really loving this series and wish there were more books. I've also begun his The Day After Never: Nemesis book. I highly recommend these two series, along with his Assassin series (link takes you to the first book in the series, King of Swords, on Amazon). The Black series is noir mystery with a lot of sarcastic humor. The Day After Never is post apocalyptic with a western feel. Assassin is, duh, about an assassin. Ha ha! But you find yourself rooting for the assassin, El Rey, especially in the last two or three books. Have you read any great books lately? What are they? What did you love about them? What made them hard to put down? Let me know in the comments! Happy reading! Lois  News
I've posted two new freewrites to the Freewriting page. Strange New World is a short showing what the modern world in a city on Illdirin looks like to Jael, a chayal warrior who lived in seclusion for thousands of years. Pride shows a brief few moments in the relationship between two brothers, one of whom is the masked swordsman known as Le Dragón. I've also read through several of the short stories on the Short Stories page and made little corrections here and there. Otherwise, I've been writing a lot, as you'll see. I hope you like the freewriting and the other things I've shared below. Happy reading! Lois  Typewriter photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash.com. The News:
I've written a brand new short story for Halloween this year. You can find it here. It's called "The Hellhound," and it's from the Fallen series I've been planning (which I talk more about below). Zachariel and Archan make a bet that Archan can scare Zach. Zach says he's not afraid of anything. He says, "I've seen it all. Done it all. Had it all done to me. I'm still here, ain't I? Nothin' scares me anymore." Archan swears he can come up with something, and boy, does he ever! But is it enough to scare an angel who's spent nearly 13K years "down under?" You'll have to read it to find out! ;) I wasn't really going for scary with this one. I just wanted to give you an entertaining read that fits the Halloween theme. Hopefully, I've done my job. If you read it and enjoy it, would let me know in the comments below? I love getting constructive feedback, and even a simple "I liked it" would help. And feel free to share the page's link with other people you think might enjoy it. It would help me a lot!  Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com, user Ella Jardim. I'll be participating once again in Camp Nanowrimo, this time with a complete reboot of the first book in my McCabe Saga series, Dark Horses. I don't want to say too much, but in this version, both Dakota and his adopted son, Nate, are dealing with bullies. At least one of these is very dangerous. I can't wait to get started writing on April 1!
In other news, if you've visited the main page here in the past couple of days, you might see a bit of a change. I've taken my first short story down and plan to re-publish it soon. I needed to change some links, and the cover changed slightly, among other things, so I needed to take it down to fix these issues. I'll be posting two other stories, too. You can see the covers and a brief blurb for each on the home page (opens in new window...all links in this entry do). I also plan to turn my novelette from the Christian romance anthology into an e-Book. I don't generally write romance, but I'm fond of this story and its main characters. It's called "A Second Chance At Love." Eventually, I'd like to publish it as a paperback, but that will have to wait until I can learn the ins and outs of publishing it in that format. I've also taken down a bunch of the short stories I posted here that I didn't think were as good as I'd like them to be. I kept one, but removed some parts that are no longer relevant, and you can read that one here. It's in two parts, and I've linked you to the first of those. I'm in the slow process of getting my first two Relic Hunters novellas ready to publish, too. Not sure when the first one will be ready to go live, but I'm hoping to have it up by June. In the meantime, you can get an introduction to the main star of that series, Bane Asmodei, by reading this short story. It also introduces a rival of Bane's, Brett Holt. So these are the four projects I'm focused on right now:
I'll post updates as I progress. To your reading enjoyment, Lois  "Gargoyle" photo courtesy of FreeImages.com,user kgreggain. I've been hard at work on this website. There's still a lot of work for me to do, but you can now find some freewriting and short stories here.
My personal favorites are the short stories, "The Cellar Dwellers (A Hawkins Short Story)" and "The Gallant Ones (An Of Blood & Magic Short Story, Part I" and "The Gallant Ones (An Of Blood & Magic Short Story, Part II)". However, if you read the Of Blood & Magic short stories, you really should start at the beginning. They tell a larger overall story, and the first two stories, which are the longest, actually give some background that sets the stage for what is to come. "The Gallant Ones" is the most "fantasy-like" story of the bunch, but it does fit in with the rest. "The Cellar Dwellers" was inspired by Halloween. I'd planned to have it posted this past Halloween, but I was too late getting it up. It's actually my top favorite at the moment. To give you some background on this story, and the Hawkins storyverse, in general, Jonas Hawkins is a young deputy marshal from Arcona (on my fantasy world, Illdirin). He's hunted more paranormal beings than most on his world have ever dreaded encountering. He comes from a family of hunters, but he never wanted to get into it full-time. His brother, Jesse, on the other hand, will hunt anything with even the slightest paranormal gift because it's what he loves to do, and he'll break the rules to do it, which irritates Jonas to no end. The closest Jonas has come to hunting paranormal beings is hunting paranormal fugitives as a deputy marshal in the Arconian Marshal Service's Paranormal Division. He has a team of people he trusts backing him up, and they obey the law, as he does. Unfortunately, in "The Cellar Dwellers," Jonas finds himself at a haunted house out in the middle of nowhere with the one person he'd rather not encounter: his brother. But his brother isn't the only one giving Jonas a hard time in this old house. ;) As for the Of Blood & Magic stories, I'll explain what the lead character and his trusty sidekick are. Lukas Walker and Vaughn Gallant are sentinels, people born with an immortality gene that becomes activated when they die a violent death. The original purpose of sentinels was to record history, but somewhere along the line it become more about protecting mortals from the forces of darkness, though they still maintain their original purpose, as well. This series is kind of a The Walking Dead meets Highlander mashup, although the flesh eating beasties come later, as does my own version of a Six Million Dollar Man type character. Adam, the main hunter in the first twelve stories, has always been taught -- usually by having it beat into him by his hunter dad -- that people with magic or paranormal abilities are evil, that they need to be eradicated. He's never questioned it, at least not until he meets Lukas and Vaughn. Meeting them changes everything, but to know how, you'll have to read the stories! The current plan is to post two stories per week for the next three weeks. After that, it will be one per week. This is just for the Of Blood & Magic series. I have another modern treasure hunting fantasy short story I'm working on, and when it's finished, I'll post that, as well. And I'll always post a blog entry to let y'all know when something new is up, so keep watching your Facebook feeds, because that's most likely where I'll be posting them. I'm also working on another possible series of short stories involving a fallen angel (Samandriel, mentioned in the previous blog entry) and an immortal. I'm looking forward to planning out their short stories, as well. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. If you read any of the short stories, let me know below how you liked (or didn't like) them. I'm eager to know what you think! And for curiosity's sake, what do you think of the concept of paranormals/psychics/celestials being hunted by mortals? What do you like or dislike about it? What intrigues you about the idea? I'm curious to know! Until later, Lois  Haha! It's been way too long since I posted, so here I am to give you an update on what's been going on.
We started looking at houses this spring, and that picture above is our new 680 square foot "cottage." It's not much to look at right now, and we don't have much furniture, but it's ours! :) I've been weeding out stuff we don't need (we can't store it anyway with a lot less storage space) and trying to get a handle on living a more simple life, but things still get complicated at times. That's to be expected, though. Once we're fully settled in, I'll get more of a handle on things, and it will become more of a sanctuary here. I can't wait! I haven't done much at all with the new trilogy that takes place in the tundra. I wrote a bit during Camp Nanowrimo back in April, but I didn't get nearly as far as I wanted to. I was supposed to write the trilogy from April through this month (June), but it hasn't happened. I need to sit down and come up with a plan that will allow for working on the projects I'm supposed to be working on, as well as those ideas that pop into my head and won't let me do anything else. I need to work on the trilogy, plus revise another smaller project, and start planning another one. I've gone down the rabbit hole once again, this time with a fallen Seraph named Samandriel. I'm basing his looks on Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. I've never played the game, which will probably prevent me from turning the character into a carbon copy of the game villain. That's definitely a good thing, since I have something awesome planned for him. I also started a freewrite based on the crazy stuff happening down in Antarctica. If you haven't heard about it, look it up on YouTube. There are a lot of videos about it. I've got my own spin on what's happening for my freewrite, which I plan to turn into a short story (a bit on the long side, but not a novella, and certainly not flash fiction). There's something under the ice, but it ain't no space aliens. That's all I'll say. ;) I'm also working on the encyclopedia that accompanies my fantasy world, Illdirin. I've neglected it, and I'm finding I have to revise character bios, info on different countries, and add material I came up with but never entered into the project. It's a huge undertaking, but I'm up for the challenge. One aspect of Illdirin I plan to start working on is my map. You can check that out over here. (The page will open in a new window. If you click on the image or the link directly below it on the page, you can view a larger version of it, which will also open in a new window). It's my first real attempt at this map, but I plan to re-trace it and relabel it, add in places that I've come up with but haven't added, and draw in some more of the geography. It's a work in progress, but I have a lot of fun working on it. When I work on it. Ha! (I mostly don't work on it because drawing makes my hands ache, so I'm going to do a little bit each day to minimize that.) I'm also doing other creative stuff -- knitting, mostly, but I plan to start doing a little drawing soon, too, even if, to start, it's just sketches of my characters and working on the map of Illdirin. Anyway, that's what I've been up to. I plan to be more present here in the coming weeks. Just trying to get my groove back, so to speak. ;) So, what have you been doing? Any creative projects in the works? Lois |
AuthorLois Eighmy (pronounced like Amy) is a full-time fantasy and thriller writer. She's also an artist and fledgling photographer. You can see some of her writing and other creative works here on her website. She lives in Missouri with her husband, Jeff, her white calico cat, Chloe, and her brindle mutt, Nikita. She dreams of moving anywhere she can experience an annual White Christmas, but is happily working on being content with where she's at in the present. Archives
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