Sunday Morning Author Update!

I like these updates because they keep me on track. 

Okay, so let’s get to it because I have a lot on my plate today.

 I haven’t quite finished the final draft of Making It While Faking It, BUT, and that’s a big BUT, I’m only one chapter away from the rug-pull and then I’ll start the resolution. It looks like this book is shaping up to be the same length as Crossing the Line. It’ll be about 400 pages.

Anyway, I should be finished with the final draft by Wednesday.  Then, I’ll perform my final readthrough and then off to editing it goes. I’ll TRY to rest for a week, at least do no story-creating. I’ll probably just do chapter planning. And then I’ll start writing the next book in the series, which will be Skylark and Orion’s book. You’ll hear about Skylark, Lark for short to some and Sky for short to others, in Making It While Faking It. 

By the way, who would you rather read about first, Orion or Max? Let me know in the comment section!

Next…

Okay, so, I kind of hit a wall with Misty Black, again. I remembered that’s what happened years ago. After the first book, I had no idea how to further the story. I’m trying to figure out what is that about??? There’s something to it. There’s a part of me that I put in that first book that I must’ve written out of me at the end of that book. That happens you know–this sort of catharsis. All storytellers have this. That’s why sometimes you’ll notice a series begins to wane if it goes on too long. I’ve learned to get out before that happens.

That’s why I’m seeking to find my “forever genre.” That one genre that satifies me so much that I want to write it forever. You have to know what you’re going to get from me. You’ll say, oh, this is a book by Zoey Locke or Z.L. and I know what sort of experience I’m going to get from her–smart heroines with smart billionaires who look way beneath the surface to find forever love. 

I read a lot of mystery/suspense/thrillers. But that’s a new habit of mine. I used to read chick-lit a lot and I still love lit-fic new-gen stories like those by Sally Rooney. I love Sally Rooney because I believe she captures my generation, Xers,  even though she’s writing about millennials, in a way that we had never been allowed to be seen. 

But, the more I TRY to get through these inane romance books with two-dimensional, toxic male and female heroes and heroines, the more I feel the NEED to stay in romance. The genre has become ridiculous. I don’t want the genre to be swallowed up by that crap. Especially since I know that my mom is a romance whale-reader and she can’t get through the top chart crap. I know there are millions of you there who are like my mom.  So I know what I have to do. I have to be consistent, stick to my brand, which you’re seeing now with the Lord Brothers, and write a lot of books within that brand. I promise you, NO two-dimensional characters, ever. No cliches–ever. No immature underage heroines who should be pursuing a real career instead of a man, ever. Coming to you and here to stay are heroines who appreciate themselves in whichever stage of life they’re even if they’re knee-deep in human struggles. 

Also, I’ve chosen to write universal characters in my romance, meaning, they can be you, and you, and you and you, and everybody. There’s power in being depicted over and over and over again. Well, if that depiction is everybody, then everybody has power. I do my own covers. It’s easier to make covers with a human image on the front. But, alas, it may be time to pay a designer to redesign my covers with no human representation on the front. 

I tried it with Intrigued recently. Tell me what you think?