Okay, I guess today I’m going to blog about how I’m writing sci-fi alien romance.
I have this problem with sticking to genres. I like write in ALL the genres, so this is why I have seventy zillion pen names littered like space dust across the ruins of the Amazon wasteland, and I know I mixed my metaphors there. I did it to be hyperbolic. Or something. I call it a wasteland, because I’m kind of fickle about it. I’ll write something and then if it doesn’t rise to my expectations of success, I just jettison it and move on to something else and then it just sits there, sinking in the rankings sadly with no one reading it. I have so. many. books just dead in the store that no one has even looked at in months or years. So many. I used to be really broken up over this, but I have come to accept that this is how my writing career works. Some people have other writing careers, but this is mine, and it could be better, but it is, like, a career, so, that is a huge. It’s like when actors are all, “Well, I’m just grateful to be working.” I’m just grateful to be selling any books at all. Thank you, readers. Thank you. I am humbled and pleased by your attentions. (There’s likely some fault to be laid at my own feet for giving up on things prematurely.)
Also, even when things are going really well and being really successful, I’ll get a call, like a small voice, just begging me to go to the dark side and try a new genre.
So, that is what happened with the space alien romance.
I knew I was not allowed to read it, because I knew I would want to write it. I would see it, and I was all, “Val, you have enough genres as it is. NO! Bad writer. Stay away from the shiny.”
But then, when no one was looking, I just sneaked a little Ice Planet Barbarians?
Um.
Yeah, I was right. I wanted to write it right away and thus began the gorge-fest of all the alien romance, just stuffing myself full of hot, hard, muscled alien, uh, words.
Anyway, so I’m doing a trilogy, because go big or go home. We’ll see if I think it’s worth it to continue. I’ve hopefully created a universe that’ll be big enough that I can keep playing in it or for a while if I want to.
I do think that these days, you can’t just break into a genre with three books and a small facebook ad spend, so I put the odds at even that I get discouraged and drop out. It’s fun, but I don’t have the same kind of love for this that I do for romantic fantasy, basically because the sci-fi romance is a little silly, just by the nature of it. (The universe is peopled with other species, all of whom have the basically same anatomy as humans, except with clit-stimulating enhancements, and ALL their females have died and they all have MATING BONDS and are deep down cinnamon rolls even if they legit, like, non-con you first. I mean, silly, but in all the best ways. *toe curl*)
I’ve attempted to embrace the silly, but… well, I am me. I did my best, okay! I promise it’s not super dark and serious, and that there is so much hot, deviant, monster sex! (Because that is obviously the point of the genre, in case you hadn’t noticed) And one thing I don’t like about it is this tendency for each series to be about the same alien species. Like, no! I want to read about a different freaky alien in every book, puh-lease. So, I am doing fur first, scales second, and finishing up with tentacles. (Eee!)
*fans self*
What are we talking about?
In other news, my Val Saintcrowe Death Fae books are hanging in nicely, and that’s fantabulous. I am working on edits of the two final books in the series, and I am just having crises with them. I really want them perfect, and I feel like there’s something wrong with the Larent-Onivia arc, and I just… I can’t… I’ll figure it out. But I would like to get the third book up for pre-order here, I’m just afraid to commit because I feel like I might need to do another rewrite?
I do have a title! It is going to be called The Crest and Swell of Surrender. Or maybe it’s switched. The Swell and Crest of Surrender? Chime in with which you like better if you want.
See you next Friday!
