As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.
This month we are writing about our writing plans for next year!
Ugh. Well. You can ASK about them. It’s a good question isn’t it? Last year was awful for us, given we had Ally’s Gallstone Summer and then Littlest’s Respiratory Illness Autumn. I did pretty well writing to begin with I think—in March I released Out of Focus, the first of the Theatr Fach novellas; and then in May I released Warning! Deep Water, one of the Naked Gardening Day stories (they’re now in a box set!). I had a while whilst I was hopped on morphine after my hospital drama where writing seemed to come very easily; so I wrote another Theatr Fach novella, Second Wind; and Sleeping Dogs, a Celtic Myth short story for Halloween; plus a couple of other things that are for a side-project that’s not up and running yet.
After that, Littlest was poorly and everything fell apart a bit. Erm. A lot.
So now, 2023 needs a plan and I’m the person to knock it in to shape! I have invested in a Bujo, courtesy of my early-morning office friends Ofelia and Nell. And I am sketching out All The Things. See all the blank pages Frenchie is looking after, ready for my thoughts and plans!
Frenchie with a closed BujoFrenchie with a lovely open page
Having said that…I’m rubbish with deadlines. We have such a lot going on family-wise that I find them really stressful. I loathe the idea of letting other people down and I like to organise my life so if I miss a deadline it doesn’t impact other people.
The only thing that’s time-dependent at the moment is that I am on the verge of collaborating with some friends over a Valentine’s Day short story giveaway that’ll be on Bookfunnel if it comes to fruition. We are just voting on what theme we want to do.
I also really want to do another collection with the Naked Gardening Day Team (Holly Day, Nell Iris, K. L. Noone and Amy Spector). We have yet to settle on a topic though! It’s likely that it’ll be a ‘day’ again though, so that’ll be a hard deadline too.
Then…I want to do another Theatr Fach story set in Llanbraduc; another Celtic Myth story; and I want to get my teeth into the third and final one of the Bradfield Village novels. That’s a year overdue now on my personal schedule and it’s bubbling along in the background. After that, I really want to revisit the 1780s and write a companion novel to The Flowers of Time that either explores the relationship between Edie Merton’s brother Henry and his friend Bennett Carruthers, or is another story featuring Edie and Jones. Perhaps a mystery? I don’t know yet. I do know I want to go back to that time period though.
I didn’t write anything long or anything historical in 2022 and I’m missing it. I feel like I really overdid things in 2021 and retreating to shorter, contemporary stories has been lovely, very refreshing and a great deal of fun. I’m starting to feel the pull of historical settings again now though and yesterday a book about the East India Company fell off my bookshelf and landed on my foot; so perhaps the Gods of Writing are giving me a hint! I aim to write about a thousand words a day when I’m in the swing of things in The Morning Office with Ofelia and Nell, whatever project I’m working on.
I’d also like to get the audiobooks of the Bradfield Village trilogy underway; but that’s finance dependent as well as narrator dependent and has been hanging in the wind for over a year now as I’ve been too tied up with family things to organise anything. (A quick punt at this point for the audio of Lost in Time, which is 99c at various places until the end of the month!)
Whatever your projects and professional or personal goals this coming year I wish you all the best with them. Thank you for staying with me through what’s undoubtedly been one of the toughest years of my life.
You can catch up with my fellow #RAtR writer’s plans by clicking on the links below.
Here’s everyone else who wrote this month. Click through to read what they have to say!
Today Holly Day is visiting to tell us all about her recent release. Holly is the second pen name of my friend Ofelia Grand. This post should have gone up on the 19th December; but because my head was full of cold I clean forgot. Please give her a warm welcome today instead!
Hi Hollyfelia! Thanks so much for coming to the blog today! Can you tell us a little bit about the split personality you’ve got going on and how that came about?
Thank you for having me! 🥰
It started about two and a half years ago. This was in the middle of the covid lockdowns, and while I’m in Sweden, where we never had a real lockdown, we were still encouraged to work from home if we could, not see people unless we had to, and keep our distance. At the time, I was working on a mushroom farm, and we mainly delivered to restaurants, and since people were supposed to stay at home and not eat in restaurants, we more or less stopped production. The result was that I didn’t have a job. Nell Iris didn’t have a job, and the lovely A.L. Lester 😘 didn’t have a job, so we met up in the mornings and wrote together.
One sunny summer day, I was writing a Christmas story, and I was in a flow. When you’re in a flow, you don’t want to step away from the story, but I’d promised my girls that we were gonna go to the playground, so I grudgingly did my duty as a mother 😆 and went to the playground.
While there I kept thinking about how I could write holiday stories all year round and not grow bored. My mind started spinning, and by the time the girls were ready to go home, I had this idea of a pen name who wrote stories for different holidays. I would call her Holly Day since she was meant for holidays LOL
The whole one-story-a-month idea came later. I finished the Christmas story I was writing as Ofelia and wrote a Valentine story as Holly. Then I wrote a story for Kiss a Ginger Day, which is in January. And then I saw Extraterrestrial Abductions Day which is in March. I wrote all three stories in 2020 and realised I had one story a month in the first quarter of 2021 before we’d reached 2021, and that’s what set off the whole one-story-a-month thing. We’ll see if I can keep it up, I’m a little behind at the moment 😊 but so far we’ve had 24 stories in 24 months.
Let’s have some seasonal questions. How do you and your family usually celebrate the midwinter season? Do you decorate the house?
Normally, we’re celebrating with my mother at her house, but she passed away a month ago (#FuckCancer), so this year, we’re a little lost. And hubby will be away working from the 23rd to the 26th, so this year, it’ll only be me and the kids.
We decorate. We have a tree, a real tree, stars in our windows and lots of candles and such. I think it’s pretty similar to the rest of the western world.
What we do that most outside of Scandinavia don’t is celebrate Saint Lucy’s Day on December 13th. It’s a bit weird, not the celebration as such – I love celebrating Lucia – but that we do it. Sweden is one of the most secular countries in the world, only about 9% go to church, so it’s a bit strange that we’re celebrating an Italian saint.
Lucia is beautiful, and the children dress up in the schools, and parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles get to come to see them sing.
Like this:
What’s your favourite food at this time of year?
Ah… I’m a problematic person. Swedish Christmas food is very meat-based. We have ham, meatballs, jellied meats, sausages, and on, and on the list goes, and I’m a vegetarian. I’m also lactose intolerant and gluten intolerant, so there go most other foods. People love to have me over, promise 😆
But traditionally, we also have a lot of kale and Brussels sprouts and such, so that’s mostly what I eat. And I make some vegetarian stuff like mustard grilled Quorn that mimics the traditional Christmas food as well as some things that aren’t normally included in the holiday foods.
Most importantly this time of year isn’t the food – though many people would disagree with me on that – but the glögg. It’s a Scandinavian type of mulled wine, and I can be without most of the traditional holiday food, but not that 😊
Have you asked for anything in particular as a present this year? If you could, what would you want wrapped under the tree for you on Christmas morning?
Eh… no. I’m not really big on things. All I need is my phone, my laptop, and an internet connection, and I already have that.
I would like a huge greenhouse, but I have no good place for it in the garden. If I’m just gonna dream though, I’ll say a greenhouse. I have a small one and it’s not in a good place, so the plants I have in the garden usually grow better than the ones in the greenhouse 🙄
And chickens. I want more chickens. Chickens aren’t as much fun this time of year though when it’s cold and snowy, and the water keeps freezing, and so on, but you can never go wrong with chickens LOL
Tell us about your current release?
It’s a gay paranormal romance novella called Willow Road and it celebrates Crossword Puzzle Day on the 21st December. I wrote it for JMS Books Advent Calendar.
It’s an interspecies fated mates story. Jeremiah hasn’t left his house in over a decade. He went to a shifter school where he was bullied for being the only human, and a group of shifters locked him up in the school basement. Life never went back to normal after that.
Zeeb is the chief of police. When he learns that someone is putting ads in the paper encouraging people to ring Jeremiah’s door right next to the crossword puzzle they know he’s solving every day, he’s furious, and goes to talk to Jeremiah. That’s when he realises Jeremiah is his mate. The problem is that as a human Jeremiah has no idea he has a mate, and he wants nothing to do with shifters, and Zeeb can’t have a human mate since the other shifters wouldn’t respect him if he did. So… best not to let Jeremiah know he’s Zeeb’s mate, right? Well, it was the initial plan, but as we established above, initial plans sometimes change.
Willow Road
Jeremiah Pace hasn’t left his house in thirteen years. He doesn’t trust anyone, least of all shifters. School was a nightmare, and despite never interacting with anyone in the village, the bullying continues in his adult life. Someone is putting ads in the paper, encouraging people to drop by his house for one service or other, but Jeremiah never opens his door.
Zeeb Hemming is a lone wolf and the new chief of police. He’s only been in Stoneshade for six weeks when he learns about the ads and goes to knock on Jeremiah’s door. Not because of what today’s ad said, but to get to the bottom of what’s going on. Human or not, Jeremiah deserves to live life in peace. The moment Zeeb nears Jeremiah’s house, he knows he’s his mate. But he can’t have a human mate.
Jeremiah pleads with Zeeb not to stir anything up. Yes, the ads are bad, but things can always get worse. Zeeb is furious someone is mistreating his mate and is willing to skin anyone who has any connection to the ads alive. But how is he to convince Jeremiah to trust him when he talks to Zeeb through a gap in the window instead of opening the door to his house?
The next day, Dolph and Boris were both missing when Zeeb walked through the door into the police station. Rica was sipping on a cup of coffee while leafing through a stack of papers.
“Morning.”
“Morning.” She gave him a quick smile before focusing on the stack of paper again.
“Where’s Dolph and Boris?”
She put down the paper she’d been reading and studied him. “They had to go out.”
“Had to go out?” Had to? It was seldom anyone had to in Stoneshade.
She tilted her head. “They were laughing about something in the paper, and then two minutes ago they had to go talk to someone.”
Zeeb gritted his teeth. “They were laughing.”
She pursed her lips. “They’re always laughing at things in the paper, aren’t they?”
Scanning the table, he spotted a folded paper underneath another stack of paper—almost as if they didn’t want him to see it. He grabbed it and quickly turned the pages.
“Jesus, what did the paper ever do to you?”
“It’s the ads. If there’s another ad, heads will roll.”
Rica gave him a confused look. “The ads?”
“They’re harassing that poor soul on Willow Road.”
The confusion deepened. “Which soul? Who is living on Willow Road?”
“Jeremiah Pace.”
She shook her head. “Never heard of.”
Zeeb sighed. Would the entire village play oblivious? “The human who went to school with Dolph.”
Her eyes widened. “They put a human in a school for shifters?”
Zeeb growled at her. “Thirteen years ago, there was some sort of attack on him, and he hasn’t left his house since. Don’t tell me you don’t know this.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t live here thirteen years ago.”
Freezing in mid-turn of a page, he looked at her. “You didn’t live here?”
She shook her head. “I’m not from here. I met Samuel while backpacking in Italy. I got to Venice on a train, one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions, and I knew the minute I set foot on the platform my mate was there. You know the spark?”
Zeeb shook his head. He hadn’t met his mate, so he didn’t know, but he’d heard enough stories to guess, and the dreamy look on her face made him smile.
“Anyway, his grandfather had a farm a few miles from here, and when he passed away, Samuel wanted to take over. It’ll be six years in April.”
Nodding, Zeeb turned another leaf of the paper. He’d been told Samuel had his cows in the pasture beyond the row houses during the summer months. “So, you don’t know anything about the ads?”
“This is the first I’ve ever heard of any ads.”
“And you never read the personal ads in the paper?”
She shook her head. “Can’t say I do.”
“You didn’t see the ad yesterday about full-service massages?”
Rica burst out laughing. “Full service? Don’t tell me we have a bordello in Stoneshade.” Then she sobered. “Shit, we don’t, do we? I worked a trafficking case while living in Phine. I couldn’t sleep for weeks.”
“No, not that I know of. It’s some idiot putting ads in the paper saying people can come to Willow Road 1 for full-service massages, but an agoraphobic guy named Jeremiah Pace lives on Willow Road 1.”
Rica’s eyes bled into the icy blue of her wolf, and Zeeb took a deep breath. Finally, someone who reacted the way they should. He found the page with the crossword and scanned the ads. “For fuck’s sake.”
“What?” Rica came to stand next to him, and he pointed at an ad. Committed sub looking for Dom. Loves role play. Please, be my carpenter and ring my doorbell. Willow Road 1. I’m waiting for you.
“Oh, God.”
“Was it what Dolph and Boris were laughing about?”
She breathed in deep and pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I didn’t look. They’re always laughing at something, and I needed to check some facts for the…” She gestured at the pile of papers next to her cup, and Zeeb nodded.
“Where is the newspaper office?”
“In town, I think.”
In Alderdon? It was a thirty-minute drive one way. “I’m going to talk to them. I’ll swing by Jeremiah’s first to make sure he’s okay, then I’ll go into town. I have my cell.”
About Holly
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.
This month, we’re all blogging about writing advice we take with a grain of salt… and…I’m not sure about this one! Do I say I rigidly follow all the rules? And have people think I’m a formulaic work-to-rule sort of writer? Or do I say I pick and choose what received advice I follow, and have people think I’m arrogant and self-important and not a proper writer?
It’s a dilemma! Probably the first advice I should actually listen to is to ignore imposter syndrome 😊.
In all honesty though, there’s so much completely conflicting advice out there for people who write, whether they’re published or not:
Write every day. It doesn’t matter if you write every day. Attend a writing group. Write alone. Self-edit. Always have an editor. Have lots of social media. Don’t bother with social media. Write different genres under different pen-names. Put everything under one pen name. Hone your skills in fanfiction. Take a course. Self-publish. Look for a publisher. Get an agent. Don’t bother with an agent.
And Oxford commas…well. That’s how decades long feuds begin.
I think the only thing you can say for certain is that what suits one person won’t suit another and the less you get hung up on all the dos and don’ts, the happier and more confident you’ll be.
I’m definitely not confident enough to self-edit for example. But I know several people who do, very competently. The writing every day thing…well. My life is very, very fragmented right now and that’s impossible for me. But it doesn’t make me any less of a writer. Everything is still ticking away inside my head and when I do sit down with my laptop I often find it springs more fully formed onto the page than it does if I’ve been writing every day. Not always! But sometimes.
So, I’d have to say that the only thing I’d take with a grain of salt is to follow all the advice you’re given. Pick what works for you and have the confidence to say ‘I tried that and it was rubbish for me, it didn’t work’.
It’s not a competition, there are no rules that dictate conformity or success. If you’re happy as you’re actually writing and happy with what you’re creating, then…that’s working. You’re a successful writer.
Here’s everyone else who wrote this month. Click through to read what they have to say!
Are you looking for a low angst gay romance with a trans MC set in a little Welsh town? With a truly terrible community orchestra? I’ve got you covered.
Second Wind
What do a shy French-horn-playing accountant and a single-dad trans trumpet player have in common other than both being members of the community orchestra at Theatr Fach in the little town of Llanbaruc?
Gethin’s been more or less hiding from life since his marriage broke up a couple of years ago. He’s joined the orchestra because his sister told him he needed a hobby rather than sitting at home brooding about his divorce.
Martin is careful who he dates because of his gender and his teenage daughter. He came to Llanbaruc as a stage manager for the Theatr Fach twelve years ago. He’s got a good set of friends here. Shannon’s a good kid. They’re a team.
Martin and Gethin hit it off. Will their mutual baggage prove too much to sustain a relationship?
A gentle m/transm romance in the Theatr Fach universe.
“Martin!” Julie, the lead violin, waved him over. “This is Gethin,” she said, her hand on the arm of a tall, thin man nervously clutching a French horn and peering out from behind a thick pair of glasses. He resembled a nervous heron. “He’s new,” she added unnecessarily. “Can you take him under your wing a bit?”
Martin shot her a look. She was a very competent, friendly woman with no tact at all.
“Of course,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Gethin,” he held out a hand and Gethin took it. “I’m Martin. Trumpet.”
“Gethin Jones,” the thin man said, shaking his hand a little too hard. His palm was warm and firm and he was clearly apprehensive. “Erm. French horn.” He waved his instrument vaguely at Martin. “As you can see.”
Martin smiled. “Come on,” he said. “Brass is over here. Let me introduce you around.” They started picking their way through the chairs. The brass section was made up of Martin and Alan on trumpet, Tim and Lucy on trombone, and Portia, a ten year old who played a tuba almost as large as she was. They were setting up music and gossiping about their week when Martin and Gethin reached them.
“Hullo hullo,” Martin said. This is Gethin Jones.” He waved vaguely at Gethin beside him. “Gethin, this is Tim, Lucy, Alan and Portia.” Everyone made noises of greeting. The room was beginning to echo with the sound of instruments being tuned and scales being played. It was a familiar cacophony.
“Are you Marion’s Gethin?” Lucy asked suddenly, leaning toward them to be heard over the cat-like screech of a young violinist and a burp from Portia’s tuba.
Beside him, Gethin tensed. “Not any more,” Gethin said brusquely, nodding. “But yes. I used to be.”
Lucy nodded, blushing. “Sorry,” she said. “My sister is Penny Wright. They went to school together. Penny told me what happened.”
Gethin nodded again. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, again. He didn’t add anything else. He seemed almost paralytically shy. But then, Martin would be reticent if he knew everyone was talking about his private business.
“I’ll go and get you some music,” Martin said, forestalling any more awkwardness. “Here, stick your horn down on the seat and grab yourself a music stand from the stack in there”. He gestured at the open door of the cupboard behind them.
The spare sheet music was on the table at the front. He made his way across the room, wending around chairs and people offering greetings until he could pick up a sheaf.
Julie met him there. “Is he all right?” she hissed at Martin, glancing past him over his shoulder at Gethin, an anxious expression on her face.
“Yes? Why shouldn’t he be?” Martin asked, frowning at her, puzzled.
“He’s Posey Morgan’s brother,” Julie hissed some more. “You know. Posey the health visitor?”
Martin shook his head. “Not my area,” he said apologetically. “Never met her.” He couldn’t remember who Shannon’s health visitor had been. An older woman though, no-one who could have been the sister of someone Gethin’s age.
Julie scowled at him, apparently blaming him for his lack of knowledge. “Well, she said he needed to get out of the house,” she continued, still hissing. “His wife left him two years ago and he’s become a recluse, she told me. I suggested he come along here to help take him out of himself.”
Martin bit his lip. As a gentle first step back in to a social life, he had his doubts about the suitability of the orchestra. One of it’s other activities was going to the pub after practice on a Friday and drinking steadily ‘til closing time. And there was a country-dancing-for-exercise sub-set of members he tried to avoid ... they’d invited him along to one of the sessions and he’d been crippled for days afterwards.
“So?” he said. “He seems perfectly normal.”
“The wife took off with his best friend,” Julie told him, shooting another guilty look over his shoulder at the brass section, who were settling the newcomer in their midst like a chicken in a nest of ferrets. Martin stopped himself turning properly to look at them, watching out of the corner of his vision.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Martin promised. “Does he actually play?”
“He brought it in to the shop to have it serviced,” she said. “He seemed to know what he was doing. And Posey said he played at school. But I don’t think he’s done much of anything for a while.” She pulled a face. “He’s an accountant.”
The Naked Gardening Day Box Set is out on 5th November!
Remember the five gay romance stories we released back in May to celebrate World Naked Gardening Day? Well we have gathered them together in a box set. We had a bit of to-and-fro-ing about what to use for the cover, but eventually we all agreed this was a superb image–radishes and forearms! What more could you want!
They are all MM romance novellas featuring being naked in a garden somehow, somewhere, to mark World Naked Gardening Day on 7th May 2022.
Back when they came out, we did some visiting of each other’s blogs to chat about our stories. You can find everyone’s guest posts here on the blog with a little bit about each story and an excerpt.
