I've spent a lot of time writing for myself or for friends and online fans. Like other writers, I've had a literary agent before, and I even had some interest in my novels from traditional publishers. It's really important to me that I have a consistent, high quality in all of my writing, but especially in works available online--since it's so easy to find, I need to put my best foot forward. For a long time, this intimidated me. What if someone read a story of mine that wasn't polished enough and they never bothered with my other work because of that?

When I left a toxic work environment after three too many years of getting no where, two of my friends separately talked to me. They had no idea at the time, but they each were practically begging me to give independent authorship a try. With both my best friends urging me that I was worrying over nothing (and promising to help me out with covers!), I took the plunge! And here I am.

I love world-building and character development! When a character traits comes out of no where and I need to go back to edit in for the new information, I just get giddy.

I want even a short story to feel like there's a bigger, darker world waiting to be explored beyond those few thousand words. And with character development and world-building, there's always so much left to tell. That sense of knowing a world is in flux and that I can go anywhere with it, and take you along, is like nothing else.

Right now, with my cover artist's encouragement, I'm working on some Founding Fathers smut. XD

I also have an LGBT fairy tale retelling novella percolating that I'll start some day.

Beyond paying-the-bills work, I enjoy time with my partners. I also podcast about books!

The need for hot, sugary tea...? :D

I'll be honest: I would love to just stay warm under my fleecy covers all dang day. But, I have responsibilities, to myself, my work, to my partners and friends and that kitten who snuggles up. If I stayed in bed, I'd also never get the sunlight I so totally need to function.

* Mull over idea
* Mull over other ideas
* Decide first idea is worth exploring
* Brew tea
* Clean bedroom
* Find headphones
* Grab a healthy snack for later
* Start in the middle of the action
* Keep going
* Research weird stuff online and hope no one ever looks at my search history
* Maybe write the end instead
* Write more of the middle
* Freak out over whether everything sounds too mechanical
* Worry people will think I'm a perv
* Distract myself for a bit
* Get over it, and realize it's sexy
* Brew more tea and get back to writing!

I have someone else do it? Haha, no, I have a lot of in-put on the covers, but one of my best friends had made me a promise that--if I would try indie authoring--she would make my covers. We talk about ideas, what or who I would enjoy seeing in the image, general concept and layout. Then she'll hunt for some image ideas, share them to go over, and we'll gather more together before she drafts up a test cover. Minor tweaks later, there's a cover!

I prefer to have my covers evoke the genre of the story in subtle, sexy and classy ways. While I have a lot of adult content in my writing, I like to save that for inside. Covers that are explicit can be really amazing looking, but they're just not my style.

I hope I can eventually bring a lot of different body types onto my covers and display a diverse cast of characters. I also prefer not to have women shown on my covers as out-and-out victims. I TOTALLY get the fantasy of victimization, and include it in my work, but I would rather have a woman look sexy and vulnerable than abused on a cover.

Growing up, I caught a taste for Stephen King's more psychological horror, like THE BODY and THE GREEN MILE. So I like to look for that type of personal horror tale.

I really enjoy dark comedy and horror. A fellow erotica writer friend introduced me to David Wong's JOHN DIES AT THE END. I'm currently borrowing her copy of its sequel, THIS BOOK IS FULL OF SPIDERS (SERIOUSLY, DUDE, DON'T TOUCH IT).

I also enjoy Christopher Moore's work like PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING and THE STUPIDEST ANGEL.

The first story I ever read of my own volition was when I was 7. It was about a barn cat who wanders off to find a place he could call home. He went through several different homes before he came back to one with two dogs. He just crawled in through the pet door, curled up with one of his friends, and they accepted him back like he was always meant to be there.

I just loved the idea of how he could tell he didn't belong as a barn cat, or a little girl's dress up cat, and so forth. That he even went away from the home he would eventually come back to, in an effort to try out who he could be before he decided that he had found his best fit already. That the two dogs treated him like a member of the family upon his re-arrival, too, stuck with me.

I think that planted a lot of the early seeds of choosing your own path and finding the people who love you and who you love best. I think that's something at my core at this point: life is filled with open, warm hearts and family doesn't have to be with the barn you grew up in.

I think the first story I wrote was about a husky puppy who was part of a "mixed breed" family, with a dachshund dad who worked as a carpenter and a stay-at-home mom golden retriever. I never finished it.

The first story I finished was in 7th grade. It was about a biologically engineered monarch butterfly that had been infected with and carried a disease that gave it the desire for human flesh. Add cabin in the woods, five teens, hundreds more infected butterflies, and cue the horror.

Somewhere in there I wrote a bunch of horror stories, all basically inspired by/ripped off from R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike.