Looking Ahead At 2022 (January/2022 Newsletter)

January 1, 2022 Misty Vixen

I’m not even sure where to begin.

A lot happened during 2021.

I guess, to help get it all sorted out, let’s first go over that.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2021

Well, first and foremost, A Warm Place fucking exploded.

When I first posted A Warm Place, I did so with a lot of hope, but also a lot of reservations. I really span the chasm between hopeful and hopeless. For a little while there in January, I was feeling pretty abysmal with the reception the novel was getting, as I’d put a LOT of work into it. And then, abruptly, it took off. And it’s gone strong since. So I got right to work on the sequels. And consequently, this series consumed most of 2021. Which is cool, don’t get me wrong. It was fun enough to write, and people really seemed to like it, and that is awesome. But good lord did it take a toll. After AWP7 I needed a break, and then after AWP8 I needed one even more. I was intending to get AWP9, the final novel in the series, done before now, but that didn’t happen. Mainly because of Raw. Which we’ll get to. Anyway, A Warm Place was a huge success for me, and I’m really happy about that, and I wanted to thank everyone who read it and reviewed it and helped spread the word about it around.

Near the beginning of the year I wrapped up Like A Fine Wine. Not my best project, for a number of reasons, but it got done.

I managed to get Valkyries back up, so yay.

I felt compelled to write sequels to all of my (former) freebie shorts, and so I did. And then I felt compelled to write sequels to those sequels, to make them all trilogies, and managed to get Pink, Blind Date, & The Pale Redhead out. The others are coming and I’ll discuss them more below.

I started writing Our Own Way on a bit of a whim and am very surprised by the reaction it got. I had hoped to get a bit further in it, too, but a number of things really kicked my ass towards the end of the year.

And, finally, the big one. Raw. After realizing I needed to take a break and start something else after A Warm Place 8, I finally sat down and wrote my caveman story I’ve been talking about for like two years now. And it fucking exploded. Raw has changed the course of my whole career.

Looking back over my previous yearlong statement at the beginning of 2021, I’m surprised that I managed to do almost half of what I set out to. I still intend to start a new pen name, but I’ve drifted away from the concept of a website store…for now. At the very least, it’s been boxed up and put away in the metaphorical attic. Not gone, but put away. Maybe someday I’ll pull it back out. I also did indeed make a return to serial fiction, though it wasn’t the idea I first had, but it taught me that serial fiction is a bad idea. For me anyway.

Last but not least, I can reveal that I secretly helped create an EMP disaster survival harem! Back near the beginning of the year, I worked on a 12-part serial fiction with a friend and called it Desperate Times. It did okay. As I learned more, I realized it’d make WAY more sense to re-release them as novels. And so that’s what is being done. More are to come, but here’s the first book. It covers roughly the first four parts of the serial, and has 9,000 new words of content. If you like my stuff, you’ll almost certainly like this series. Also, just to be clear, because there have been questions, Lara X. Lust is not my new pen name, nor is it me. I do not run that name, just do some work with them.

I didn’t get my shit together in 2021. If anything, I fell apart harder than ever before, for a number of reasons, but I did manage to have the most successful year of my life. So that’s pretty cool.

Now, let’s talk about this year.

WHAT I INTEND TO DO IN 2022

Things have changed. Sort of.

I learned a lot last year. Honestly, I learned more in 2021 than I had in all the years combined before that. Consequently, I’d like to explain why I want to make the changes that I’m going to be making.

To explain that, we need a little history lesson.

In the beginning, there was erotica.

I stumbled awkwardly onto the scene in late 2014 with my weird little sci-fi erotic serial fiction Hellcats. It worked. People bought it, I could write more of it, so that’s basically what I did. I experimented here and there with slightly longer works, but I basically just hustled my fucking ass off and wrote erotic serial fiction all the way through 2015, 2016, & 2017. When 2018 hit, something changed in me. I just could not write serial fiction any longer. By then, I’d been wanting to make the change to longer fiction for awhile, and with the success of Demoness, then my longest title ever, both financially and with how much fun I had writing it, I knew I had to make the switch. I did, managing to buy myself some time by re-releasing all my serial fiction as novels with new cover art.

By then, I was beginning to get the idea that there was this type of erotica called harem. The concept seemed simple enough: one dude banging multiple chicks. Technically speaking, the first thing I ever published, Hellcats, was harem. So through 2018, 2019, & 2020, I drifted closer to harem, gaining a dawning awareness of the rules of the genre. Because I am not a social person by nature, it took me quite awhile to begin interacting with the harem community. Finally, in 2021, I did. This is when I began learning a lot.

I learned about a lot of rules, and how I was breaking or bending them, and all about the expectations of the genre.

Probably the biggest thing I learned, and this genuinely fucking blows my mind, is that harem and erotica do not necessarily mix.

I still have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around that.

I don’t want to really get into the rules & regulations of harem, because it’s strangely complex, but also hotly debated, and that’s not really what this is about. What this is about is one of my biggest takeaways from this was: I am at a large disadvantage if I want to be a harem author. And I do want to be a harem author. Harem offers me the most freedom as an author. Quite by accident, I stumbled into almost the perfect genre. I really like writing about action and adventure, I really like writing about sex, I really like writing about a protagonist having multiple girlfriends, I really like writing about monster girls and alien girls and other inhuman girls. All of these are components of the harem genre. Plus, it’s just fun to write.

Unfortunately, it’s obvious that I have some stuff holding me back. Surprisingly, one of the biggest things that has come up again and again is the fact that I have a female pen name. This is one of the reasons I want to start a second pen name. Obviously this time it will be a male one. Another huge thing holding me back is my erotica past.

Now we can finally talk about some of the changes I’ve made recently.

Something really important I learned about being a successful indie writer is that you want to have a lot of ‘entry points’ into your library. Or basically, as many titles, be they novels or shorts or collections, that people can come across in the wild, pick up and read, by themselves. As in, there’s no previous required reading to understand and enjoy the story. Although it sounds counterintuitive, in a roundabout way, this was why I fired up four shared universes. My ‘theme’ as an author wasn’t outer space or fantasy or paranormal romance, it was, among other things, dudes banging inhuman women. So I wanted fans of sci-fi and fans of fantasy and fans of post-apocalyptic and fans of paranormal romance all to be able to find something. Many entry points. That was also why I wrote the Misty Vixen Starter Pack and the freebie short stories, and why I experimented with making some of my novels free. Exposure is everything, discoverability is your biggest obstacle as an author.

However, and this is a thing I have learned harshly: your titles should be representative of your library and what you have on offer. And this is where the problem comes in. In the beginning, I had erotica on offer. But now, I have harem novels on offer. And those two things bump. If some harem reader who has never heard of me before stumbles across, say, Wanderlust, or Desire, and reads it, they’re not going to be happy. And that’s why I removed the subtitles from every book that isn’t harem, that’s why I added ‘This is NOT harem’ in the description of every non-harem novel. It’s why I made the freebies not free anymore, because they became bad advertisements for my library, because they don’t represent what I’m writing nowadays.

Unfortunately, I’m at a bit of an impasse. I’ve been told that if I really want to deal with it in a brutally efficient way, I would just unpublish everything that isn’t harem. But I can’t do that. That’s like…thirty novels. I put a LOT of work into them, and those stories are what a lot of readers got started on. Taking them down just feels wrong. I still like most of them and I’m still glad I wrote most of them. They were fun and I like the characters and stories.

So, instead, I’ve done everything I can to separate them from the harem stories. I think, someday, maybe next year depending on how this year goes, I may take them out of the Kindle Unlimited and instead start also offering them on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc. Maybe, we’ll see. Sometimes it’s better to just keep things simple, though.

So that covers why I’m making all these changes: I’m trying to become a harem author.

Now, I have three more things to discuss: the roundup of where I stand with all my varied projects, and also my new pen name. And finally, we’ll finish this off with a bullet point list of what I hope to accomplish in 2022, as well as a brief section dedicated to specifically January. First the roundup.

I’ve been saying for a little while now that I’m intending to wind down my shared universes, as they have largely run their course and served their purpose. I’m closer than ever to doing that. So here’s a little look.

PARANORMAL UNIVERSE

This universe is now officially closed (again). I know I said that before, but then I had to write two more Pink stories. But now I have. And so it’s done for real this time. Honestly, Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy have never truly worked for me. It’s not impossible, but I don’t see myself returning to this scene.

POST-APOCALYPTIC UNIVERSE

This is finished. I had intended to write two more series, but I ultimately realized that they would actually be much better combined into one, original series that isn’t part of the universe. I’m not saying it’s impossible that I’ll never return to this universe, as I do have a lot of love for it, but the future is simply too crowded for right now. There’s other Post-Apocalyptic universes I want to explore. But maybe someday, years from now, I’ll return. I do have a few ideas.

SCIENCE FICTION UNIVERSE

This one has a bit more to do. One final series. The follow-up to Like A Fine Wine. I’m admittedly feeling iffy on this one. I committed to it, so I’ll do it, but I’m kinda worried. Like A Fine Wine didn’t go as well as I’d originally intended. And I’ve never actually written a sequel series before. I’m extremely reluctant to go back on a promise, but at the same time, it’s next to impossible to force myself to write something I truly don’t want to. And honestly, I think readers would be able to pick up on it. On top of that, it slows down EVERYTHING. While I was writing Like A Fine Wine, writing became a nightmare. I dreaded working on any project. So I just can’t say. The only good news, I suppose, is that I can kick this particular can down the road. I literally don’t have time to think about it right now, and probably won’t be able to actually reexamine it until 2023 because of all the work I have to do on other projects. However, beyond that, there’s nothing left in this universe. I originally intended to write a hurt-comfort story set on an island, but I’ve since realized it would actually make more sense to roll it into a completely separate series in another universe, so that’s what happened to that.

FANTASY UNIVERSE

This one has the most work left. I need to write Large & Lovely III and Snakeskin III, both of which I hope to wrap up sometime soon as well. I also need to write the Epilogue novella to Lust & Adventure. And finally, I’m going to reboot Demoness. This universe probably won’t be closed out for awhile, but in reality, it’ll just be focused on Demoness. I want Demoness to be pretty big and epic, and it will pull from all the other stuff I’ve written in this universe, and will likely go on for years and years from now, as it will be a passion project, not a moneymaker, and thus I’ll be able to take more time to write it in the background. And, like, can I just say how fucking excited I am for the Demoness rewrite? I already have the cover for it made. The woman who made the originals drew it for me and I found a fucking cool new font and I’ve got a lot of ideas. The first novel is going to basically cover Books 1 & 2, with some expansion and more coherency in the storytelling, and probably be about as long as Demoness IV (my longest novel ever) was. I’m thinking all of them are going to be 100,000+ words now. Which means they’ll take a lot longer to write, but whatever, it’ll be worth it. Also, this will be a full rewrite, so even though the plot will be similar at first, it’s still all new words. No copy/pasting.

STAND ALONE PROJECTS

A WARM PLACE: As mentioned above, A Warm Place 9 will be the final novel in the series, and at some point I’ll release The Complete Series. That being said, I’ve been toying around with an idea or two for another series set in this universe. I’m very on the fence about it. On the one hand, I like these ideas, on the other, I have so many other things to write, and I’ll have just gotten done writing the longest series I’ve ever written when I wrap this one up. Maybe I’ll come back in a few years. That being said, it will not be about Chris. It will be a new protagonist. Probably.
OUR OWN WAY: I’m about halfway finished with this series at the moment. I’m looking at eight or nine total novellas and then a Complete Edition. I’m definitely going to wrap this one up this year, and then I’m done, like, forever, with serial fiction. I’m kind of kicking myself because judging by the reaction I got from this, I could have been MUCH more successful if I’d just made these full novels with proper cover art. I think from the outside it looks successful but compared to A Warm Place or Raw, it’s basically making pennies. And don’t get me wrong, not everything is $, but after awhile, you get better about seeing opportunities, and realizing when you fucked an opportunity up. Regardless, I’m happy with this series. It’s been very fun to write, and I really love how much people love it. I’m going to write another series kind of like this, but in a sci-fi setting.
RAW: So this is my main focus for 2022. I am positive I will not be able to finish the entire series this year, even pumping out a novel a month. I have a lot of material to work with and a lot of ideas. Basically, expect Raw, Raw, and more Raw all this year.
OTHER: I will discuss this below, because it involves the other thing I need to talk about, my pen name.

Okay, so, first of all, I have a name picked out, and no I’m not saying what it is yet. Main reason for that is because I am nowhere near ready to launch it yet. I thought for a long time about how I want to handle this new pen name and this is what I have decided. Once launched, I’m going to basically split my ideas in two. My new pen name will handle my more action-oriented material, whereas Misty Vixen will handle A) Old ideas that need to be written, B) Chill slice-of-life fiction, and C) Weird-ass stuff that might absolutely tank. Some of my ideas are experimental, some of my ideas are, I’ve been told, fucking awful in terms of harem. I still want to write them, but I don’t want them to poison the well, as it were. Instead, I might as well just poison the well that’s already been poisoned, (according to a lot of readers, serious some people fucking hate me over on Reddit). This seems like a nice compromise.

I want to have several novels written and ready to go before I launch my new pen name. I have also been advised by several other authors in the genre that I’m kind of shooting myself in the foot by writing such long series. That’s only really sustainable if I’m, like, Logan Jacobs or Eric Vall. Which hey, apparently I’m not that good of a writer, but oh well. What I need to be doing is writing short stuff, like 3-4 novel series, that can end, or can keep going, depending on if people like it or not. I have to admit, I’m not super fond of this approach, but I can’t argue with the logic.

That being said, I’m taking a slightly similar approach to this new pen name as I did with Misty Vixen, in that I want to have several genres on offer, they just won’t be shared universes. I’ve got a hardcore survival series I really want to write first. It’s sci-fi and, yep, you guessed it, in a winter setting. I’m debating about what I want the second series to be, but I’ve got a couple of really fucking cool Post-Apocalyptic ideas. We shall see.

I honestly don’t know when I will be ready to launch this new name. I can’t even promise it’ll be this year. I sure want it to be, but my mental health took a massive dive in 2021. I’d really like to believe that it will get better in 2022, but even if it does, Raw still takes precedence.

All right, we’re at the end. Let’s wrap this up.

2022 Agenda

Write 9 more Raw novels.
Finish A Warm Place.
Finish Our Own Way.
Write Snakeskin III, Large & Lovely III, and Lust & Adventure - Epilogue.
Assist with more Desperate Times novels.
Write first Demoness reboot novel?
Launch new pen name?
Rework a lot of cover art. I’ve been in the process of tracking down new artists, and an old one, and I’m working on getting some of my covers redone. This is one of the last things I want to do as part of closing out my old library. I’ve spent years fiddling with my books and I’ve finally admitted to myself that it’s costing me too much time and money. So I’ve decided to give everything one last going-over. Haven is in the process of being re-covered, and I think the covers are amazing. Parasexual and Like A Fine Wine will get the same treatment from the same artist. I also intend to get most of the Collections re-covered by my old cover artist who made most of the covers you see today. I also want to get the Sex & Survival novels, and Amazonian’s Love re-covered.
I’m tossing around the idea of having drawings of side and minor characters from my varied series created just for fun. If I do, they’ll be hosted here on the site like the others.

January 2022 Agenda

Publish Raw II
Publish Large & Lovely - The Complete Trilogy
Publish Snakeskin - The Complete Trilogy
Publish Our Own Way 6 (Hopefully)

Wish me luck, and I hope you all have a good 2022.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (December 2021)

December 1, 2021 Misty Vixen

Here we are at the end of another year. Although it feels like the end of a decade after all the shit that’s happened.

So, what happened in November?

It was close, but I publish Raw!

I also managed to get Our Own Way 5 out!

I managed to get most of Pink 3 written. I also took down all five of the freebie stories, which were no longer freebies, and also their sequels. I will be republishing them as Complete Trilogies as I write each third short. I’m hoping to get those done over the next month or two, but A Warm Place 9 and Our Own Way takes priority. That being said, I’m setting Our Own Way aside for a moment. I need a break from it and to just let it settle for a bit. I honestly am still surprised people like it so much. It’s definitely made me reconsider taking a bigger stab at slice-of-life stuff.

As for what’s up in the coming month, I’m very much hoping to get A Warm Place 9 out. I also think now is the time to talk about A Warm Place as a whole.

When I started rewriting it last year, I had a lot of plans. Those plans changed again and again over the course of 2021. Like, this series has gone through more plan changes than literally anything I have ever written for a number of reasons. Some of it is my own personal taste, some of it was logic, some of it was emotional. At one point I was pretty seriously considering hitting 15 novels, and then I trimmed that down to 12. After the difficulties of the last few months, combined with my growing knowledge of what makes sense to do and what doesn’t make sense to do, I’ve finally realized that A Warm Place 9 will be a perfect place to end it.

I was looking over my plans and this just makes the most sense. I’m getting tired of writing it, and I think people are getting tired of reading it. I’m definitely seeing diminishing returns with each book released now. It hit its peak somewhere around Book 6. Writing about Chris and the others has been a lot of fun, but I think it’s time for them all to settle down after one last adventure.

That being said, I don’t know if new content set in the A Warm Place universe is out of the question. I’ve got a couple of ideas for series. I really liked the whole down-to-earth characters and situations and the more realistic gritty survival. Honestly, this has gotten me more into the idea of writing about disaster survival, because there’s a lot of ways that can go and it’s fun to engage with. So yeah, maybe another series or two might not be out of the question in the A Warm Place universe, but it’ll be awhile, because I am going to need a long break from it after writing this next one.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll get A Warm Place 9 published by the end of the month, and then sometime after that I’ll get The Complete Series out. (I am SO not looking forward to formatting that. It’s going to be a nightmare.) Once it’s done, I’ll get to work on RAW II, and somewhere in the background I’ll be working on getting the freebies trilogies out so I can finally call them done and close out a few universes, and I’ll work on Our Own Way 6 once I feel saner.

Also, in case you missed it, I have a SubReddit.

That’s about it. Wish me luck, I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and it has been shaping up to be a really, really bad winter this year.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (November 2021)

November 1, 2021 Misty Vixen

TL;DR VERSION: Our Own Way 4 and A Warm Place 8 came out last month. Our Own Way 5 and Raw should be out this month. Lust & Adventure is getting an epilogue at some point soon, and all the freebies are getting another sequel each and being republished as cheap collections.

So I published a few things last month.

OUR OWN WAY 4

KINDLE

A WARM PLACE 8

I was hoping to have more done on the Our Own Way front, and I did get it about 1/3 written, but between Raw and other stuff, it just didn’t happen.

October wasn’t as tough as September, but it was tough.

I’m not sure what it is, but I think I may be more burned out than I realized. I’m beginning to worry something might be physically wrong, but that’s a problem for behind the scenes.

I’ve been taking inventory of…well just about everything. Anyone paying attention to my backlog (probably no one lol) might notice a few minor tweaks at this point. I’m slowly updating them again partially for the sake of consistency, but mostly because it occurred to me that I do have to be careful in balancing maximizing my career, but also ensuring that I keep my fanbase in mind, (and also my sanity). It’s a difficult process and sometimes I don’t even realize that it’s gotten out of balance for awhile. And things seem to be changing faster than ever before, and that’s been consistent for the past several months, so at this point I’m just rolling with the punches as best I can.

So there’s a lot of stuff cooking behind the scenes now, is what I’m trying to say. I made some decisions based on making my fans happy.

I don’t really want to go over, like, everything, until we hit 2022 and I have my yearly address. Both because I’d just like to wait to make a comprehensive update on all things related to my writing until it makes sense, and also because more time to make things happen would be nice. Not everything I’m doing relies on myself at this point.

But here’s what’s on the horizon.

I’m really, really aiming to get the first novel in Raw finished and out before the end of November. However, I am also taking a bit more time on it, both for my sanity and also because I’m in new territory, so I’m less sure of myself. I’ve never done caveman fantasy before, and although I’ve been thinking about it for a few years now, I’m finding that it’s a bit different than what I expected now that I’m actually doing it.
I’m also going to get Our Own Way 5 out this month. But I’m going to pump the breaks a bit on that series because I have a few other minor projects that I want to take care of and get written. Which I will talk about below.
Once the first Raw novel is finished, I’m going to go right into A Warm Place 9. I have a solid idea of what I want to do. I’m not sure if I can manage it, but I am going to try very hard to get it written and out before 2022. I’ve got the cover for it at least.
The little projects. So ever since I went ahead and wrote sequels to all my five free shorts, the notion to make them into trilogies has been nagging at me. For reasons that I’ll get into during the 2022 address, I’ve decided to take them down, all 10 of the stories, and instead replace them with Complete Trilogies. They will be 99c and enrolled in the KU. If you’re looking for a quick explanation now: it no longer quite makes sense to have these free shorts up, but I also don’t want to just abandon the fans who enjoy these. So instead of just taking them down and retiring them, I figured I’d instead reward people with a third story for each of them and seal each together in complete packages. I’m hoping to get them written and out before the end of the year, but we’ll see how that goes.
If, by some miracle, I find extra time, another loose thread that I really want to tie up is Lust & Adventure. [SPOILERS] So L&A has been a thorn in my side for years now. It ends on a very bittersweet note, and the entire reason I did it was because I thought people were getting sick of the same happy ending. I didn’t realize I was wrong. A lot of people told me how unhappy the ending made them. I considered several options. The first was to just delete the trilogy, but that’s an entire trilogy of novels I wrote, I don’t want to just get rid of them. The second is to ret-con the ending, but that seems somehow wrong. Ultimately I decided on fixing it via Demoness, which I began doing in Demoness V, and it would have been wrapped up in Demoness VI. But now Demoness is getting rebooted [SPOILERS]. So my solution to this whole thing is to write an epilogue to the trilogy. It doesn’t ret-con the ending so much as have another ending further along. Although I felt justified in writing it originally, I’ve since come to regret it. Ultimately, I just want to write about people being happy. So I’ll be writing that sometime soon too.

There’s other, bigger things I’ve decided on, but again, later.

For now, back to writing.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (October 2021)

October 2, 2021 Misty Vixen

OMFG. I was not ready for September.

I was really not ready for September.

What did I get done in September? Uh, like, nothing.

I published OUR OWN WAY 3.

That’s it, in terms of actual production.

It wasn’t a total loss, though. I’m basically done with OUR OWN WAY 4, which is the longest one yet. People kept asking for them to be longer, so this one is larger. Not like crazy longer or anything, but longer. I hope to get it out soon.

I wrote about 2/3 of A WARM PLACE 8. I have the cover totally ready to go. So that’s good at least.

But oh my God, September hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s not like anything actually seriously bad happened, so don’t worry I’m hurt or lost a loved one or anything. It was more just…my mental health has become a lot more precarious over the last year. And all of a sudden a bunch of real life shit showed up all at once, just a bunch of separate issues that all happened to fall on September, and it was all stuff that I couldn’t delegate. I had to personally deal with each one. I don’t really want to go into anymore detail than that because I’m sure everyone reading this would be like ‘OMFG are you kidding me? That’s not a real problem', because it’s such simple stuff. It’s just that my ability to deal with stuff has eroded so much.

Like fuck, I just want to write stories about people fucking, can life just leave me alone?

And then, in the middle of all that, my laptop royally fucked itself. I brought it to some repair people and they were like ‘Fuck we can’t even turn it on’. So it had to get shipped out. I had to use a backup laptop and it was SUUUUUPER slow, and then even more shit happened with the laptop, but the good news is that I have a functioning fast laptop, but now I need to reorganize everything. Like all my files and shit. I’m actually in the middle of it right now so yeah. It’s a whole project. Also, I have to update all my titles AGAIN because of a few more changes I learned about. Fuck.

So once that’s done, then what?

Well, first I get out Our Own Way 4.

Then I bust ass and get out A Warm Place 8.

And then I’m shifting focus away from A Warm Place for a little bit. Like, it’s been fun, but oh fuck, I’m getting sick of it. Basically seven whole entire novels back-to-back since January. I know I took a break after A Warm Place 7 but like fuck, I need another one or I’m gonna lose it.

I’ve decided to go ahead and launch my fantasy caveman series! That’s what I’ll be working on next. And I’ll still be doing Our Own Way in the background. I’m not sure how long that’s going to go on for, but I’ve got a basic skeletal layout for it and I feel pretty safe saying there will be less than ten episodes. Sorry if that’s disappointing. When I first started it, I didn’t have much of a plan, but I realized how stupid that was, and now that I’m gearing up for this new pen name for real, I need to scale things back a bit in other departments.

The only thing I know for sure after that are two things: I’ll write the next A Warm Place novel after the first caveman novel, and I’ll be working on my pen name. I want to launch a pair of trilogies that could expand into more, or could just stay trilogies. I feel pretty confident about what those first two trilogies will be, but I’m just gonna shut up about it until we get closer to roll-out.

For now, it’s time to just put my head down, nose to the grindstone, and fucking write, write, write.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (September 2021)

September 1, 2021 Misty Vixen

It’s been a long, strange, stressful, enlightening month.

A lot has changed.

I know I keep saying that but I swear to God it’s like attempting to assemble a puzzle while the shape of the pieces, and the puzzle itself, changes.

So, first all, shit I actually got done in August.

I published A Warm Place 7.
I published Our Own Way 2.
Paranormal Passions, Desire, & Wanderlust are no longer free. In short: the data revealed it didn’t help.
I removed the Collections for A Warm Place because I don’t like doing them and they don’t really help much. I’ll be releasing a Complete Edition when A Warm Place is finished. If you missed out on the shorts and want to read them, e-mail me.
I published all the sequels to each of my 5 free shorts. They are all 99 cents and in the KU.
I got new cover art for A Warm Place, as well as that new banner up there, courtesy Kirk Mason.
I made a shitload of little changes that can be viewed here.
I removed my Dragon Age fan fiction for reasons I’ll get into below but basically: I don’t have time for it.

That’s about it. Those background changes are actually ongoing because I learned YET MORE after completing all the changes I wanted to make, but it shouldn’t be anything the readers actually notice. It’s all back-end stuff.

So what’s happening in the immediate future?

I’m writing A Warm Place 8. That’s mainly what’s happening in September. I am writing A Warm Place 8 as fast as I can. I have it planned and I feel good about it. I’m also going to try and get an Our Own Way or two out before October. Maybe even three, we’ll see how it goes.

How about the less immediate future?

Well let’s talk about that.

I’ve been learning so many things. Technical behind-the-scenes stuff and stuff about cover art and how I should be structuring my stories and more. Most of it I’ll incorporate into my writing career, some of it I won’t as it doesn’t gel with how I do things or what I personally feel about some subjects. The short of it is: I’ve learned how to do what I’ve been doing before, but better. So it’s not like I’m switching over to angsty vampire romance or whatever is popular today. (I’m showing my age by saying that, I’m sure.)

While a lot of things are in a state of flux right now as I let the dust settle, which is taking longer and longer because I keep learning new things and then it all gets shaken up again, I at least know what the way ahead looks like for now. Kind of. Here’s some pertinent facts.

I’m going to finish A Warm Place and it’s almost certainly going to cap off at 12 novels. I have a very decent conclusion in mind and I think it will feel like a good stopping point. That’s as close to set-in-stone as it gets with me. I’ll try to have A Warm Place finished before mid-2022.
I’m going to continue with Our Own Way. I’ve got a vague idea of where it will end, but basically I’m going to just write it until it feels done.
My next big series is still going to be the fantasy caveman one.
I’ve set aside any ideas of fan fiction and also I’ve put aside the incest erotica for now (as much as I loathe to do that, I really wanna write it.) But the good news about the incest erotica is that I’ve got a lot of ideas, and at this point I’m doing well enough that when I do get around to writing it, I can just host it all for free on its own website. Yay! Tons of free incest erotica!
I have decided I’m almost certainly going to reboot Demoness, however, it’ll be awhile. Like a year or two. Maybe longer. Not sure. If you want to know why, please refer to this post where I explain the problem in detail. In short, I am extremely excited about this reboot…when I can get to it.
One of the biggest changes I think is that it was pointed out to me that I need to have more potentially shorter series. Like more trilogies. They’re less risky. On the one hand, that sounds like stupid corporate bullshit and yeah, I get that. On the other hand: it makes sense. Imagine if A Warm Place 1 had flopped. I’d be stuck writing 12 novels that don’t sell jack shit. That would tank my writing career. Now I don’t want to give up my big epic long series, but I also need to have a few more things going that are more, I guess you could sane mentally sound. Now again, I would like to note, this doesn’t mean I’m going to just jump onto whatever bandwagon is popular and pump out something I don’t give a shit about. What this means is that basically I’ll be augmenting my serial fiction idea. I’m still toying around with precisely what I want to do next, it’s up in the air between monster girls and more winter survival, this time in a sci-fi setting. (Shockingly, I haven’t had my fill of winter survival.) So basically, instead of it being a serial, it’s going to be a trilogy that has a natural conclusion point at the end of the third book, BUT it could also continue if people like it enough. This is really more of an experiment than anything else and I don’t want to wander into the territory of holding sequels hostage or just abandoning series because they don’t sell. Basically, as always, I’m looking to strike a balance between my bank account and my readership (and my own sanity). Personally, I’m looking forward to it, because it will let me write a new thing, and writing a new thing just about always makes me happy!
So what all this means is that I’m going to keep on writing A Warm Place, and Our Own Way, I’ll also be working on this new harem trilogy idea in the background.
I may also use this method to gauge reception to some of the other series that I want to write in my shared universes because at this point, I do have to admit that I feel like there’s been a shift in what I can do. Ironically, before when I was scraping by, I could kind of just write whatever and selling well wasn’t all that much different than selling poorly. I could afford to commit to finishing something, like Parasexual for example, even if it wasn’t all that popular. I really can’t do that now. I can’t go off and write a 10 novel series that’s only going to sell 1/10 as well as A Warm Place for example, I just can’t. And some of these series are quite old, ideas I came up with years ago. I’ve been finding that there are some ideas I outgrow. I’ll actually sit down and try to plan them and realize I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to do that to the fans, but I also know what happens when I make myself write something I don’t care about: it’s torture and it slows down everything.

Anyway, that’s about the size of it. Although it keeps growing.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (August 2021)

August 1, 2021 Misty Vixen

July was a weird month. First, let’s cover the things I did manage to do.

Paranormal Passions is now free!
Valkyries, all three of them and the Complete Trilogy, are back on the Kindle and enrolled in the KU!
I launched a new serial fiction called Our Own Way. It’s a contemporary harem that I’ll expand more on below.

I was hoping to come before you today saying that A Warm Place 7 was done or close to, but it’s not. I began work on right at the beginning of July, but I hit a block and realized that I was burned out on it and I just needed some time. So I didn’t actually get a chance to restart production until mid-July, and even then, I’ve run into some other problems in my real life. Nothing serious, just boring stuff. As it stands right now, I’m about halfway done with the novel, and I have the cover art ready to go. I’ve been working steadily on it for the past week or so, finally getting into a good rhythm, and I intend to continue until it’s done. After that, I’ll probably actually make myself take more of a real break from the next one, probably a few weeks, and then get to it.

I’m sorry if I’m not pushing out A Warm Place as far as I could be, it’s just at this point I’ve been working on the series literally ALL year.

That’s actually part of what led me to launch Our Own Way. Here’s a blog post I made fleshing it out more.

To go into a bit more of an explanation as to why this is happening, I think it’s because I have two core things I want to write about: dangerous adventures and emotional or more low-key domestic stuff. Now, I can definitely have both, but one tends to overtake the other, and sometimes I just want one or the other. It also helps release the pressure. These more low-key serial erotica pieces allow me to just kinda…write. With stuff like A Warm Place, I have to plan and worry over a whole novel for weeks. Plus, as I’ve said earlier when I wanted to do this before, it can allow me to explore ideas that I couldn’t otherwise.

Anyway, Our Own Way 2 should be out soon, and progress marches forward on A Warm Place 7. Progress also marches quietly on in the background for my caveman fantasy harem. That’s all I’ve got for now.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (July 2021)

July 1, 2021 Misty Vixen

First things first, A Warm Place 6 is out now!

To those of you who have already finished it, don’t worry, I’m already beginning work on A Warm Place 7. I know it says that the book will be released in August, but I did that give myself a little bit of leeway. At worst it should be early August. If we’re lucky, I can get it done before the end of July! (Fingers crossed.)

This next A Warm Place is going to get grimmer and more intense. I’m hoping people like it as it focuses more on the action and survival aspects of the universe and will note an overall tonal shift in the narrative.

Now, about the second collection, I did fully intend to get it out by now, but a technical difficulty delayed it. It should be out within the next week.

Let’s talk about the future.

In my last update, I said I planned on starting or had started a few projects. June was a…confusing month for me. There’s a lot going on in my life right now in the background and I’m dealing with some other stuff. Ultimately, it’s nothing life-changing or terribly bad. But I did have a few duds.

After working a bit more on the sad/happy Sci-Fi Series, I felt something was off with it and, in a rare move, deleted everything I’d written. It just didn’t feel right. I still like the overall plan I have for the story, but it needs to go back into the darkness for now.

I began working on that new Post-Apocalyptic Series I was talking about, but it ended up getting completely, utterly, totally eclipsed by another project. It’s not gone, just delayed.

My fantasy caveman story. I’ve been mentioning it for years now, and the urge to write something like that has stayed with me the entire time. Near the end of June, I sat down and started planning. I intended to just sketch out some basic ideas but as I got started all this stuff just poured out of me and I planned out an entire universe and 15 novels worth of stories. So………that happened.

In short, I’m working on that story in the background now. I’ll probably be ready to actually discuss it next month.

The last thing I want to say is something I touched on last month. A Warm Place has really changed things for me. Like, it’s selling at a pace that I only dreamed of before. I still can’t say for sure, because life is unpredictable, and an indie writing career is even more unpredictable, but if things continue in this fashion, then it definitely puts off the need to start a new pen name or start up a store on my website for awhile. I mean, I can write enough A Warm Place content for easily the rest of 2021 and probably several months into 2022. And although I’m less sure about this new series, if it does as well as A Warm Place, then it’ll carry me safely into 2024, maybe even 2025 if I can slow the pace of releases even a little bit.

Dear lord, if I could afford to take 6 weeks instead of 4, that would be amazing.

So anyway yeah, that’s what’s up for July. Full steam ahead on A Warm Place 6, A Warm Place Collection 2 soon, and fantasy caveman novel being written in the background. I am so psyched for that one.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (June 2021)

June 1, 2021 Misty Vixen

In case you missed it, A Warm Place 5 is now out!

It’s gotten a pretty good reception, so that’s been really nice.

At present, I am working on A Warm Place 6 and I intend to get it, and the second collection, out before the end of June.

I didn’t have too much else to say, May was better than April, but still far from good. I’m hoping June will just be recovery. But then I decided since we’re about halfway through the year, maybe I should give an update, because clearly some of the plans laid out in January have changed. Like, a lot.

So I figured I’d give you a mid-year update and some of my thoughts on things.

Paranormal is still closed out, no change there. I’ll probably stop mentioning it after this.

With my Fantasy Universe, obviously I canceled the serial fiction. I’m pretty sure at this point Demoness is going to be the final series in that universe, but it’s still got a ways to go. Unfortunately, because it’s not a good seller, I can’t have it be the thing I give my primary attention to. I know I said I’d try to get a new Demoness novel out this year, but we’re this far into the year and I haven’t even touched Demoness once, and I have so many other things to do, so…honestly the chances seem low that I’ll get to it in 2021, or even 2022. I’ve got a lot of ideas for future novels, but a lot of the time I do wonder if maybe it’s a stupid idea to, I guess you could say ‘waste’, these cool ideas on a series that most people aren’t ever going to read, and instead save them for something much bigger and better. I guess we’ll see. An idea I do keep coming back to is perhaps doing one more series after or alongside Demoness, one that introduces a new protagonist, but has a much stronger storyline and utilizes the characters and world I’ve already created.

With my Science Fiction universe, I’ve got two more series I want to write. Much like Demoness, Like A Fine Wine did not do well. And unlike Demoness, I had a lot of trouble writing it, which was why I ultimately ended it at Part 4. Consequently, the follow-up series I have planned may be delayed for awhile. The other series, the one that has more emphasis on tragedy and comfort, I actually did some writing for it last month in a fit of creative spontaneity. I have a cover ready to go and a full layout for the whole first novel, as well as strong ideas for the following two novels, so I might actually get this one written. I don’t expect it to do good honestly, and it’s much more slow paced than A Warm Place or Haven. There’s no action, it’s closer to my older ideas, with a group of people just trying to find happiness and build a simple life together after each suffering a personal tragedy. I might get the first novel out before the end of the year, but we’ll see. Even if I do, I don’t intend to make this a main series. I won’t be pressing on relentlessly trying to get it done, I’ll definitely be taking my time with it. After these two series, there’s nothing else.

Plans have changed for the Post-Apocalyptic Universe. I know I said that I had two series left, but after some serious consideration, I realized that the core concept for the next series would make WAY more sense as its own series and universe. Consequently, it will now be the launch series for my new pen name. I feel really good about it. All that leaves is one final series that will serve as a nice capstone. It takes place an appreciable amount of time after the end of Haven, features a brand new and unique protagonist, and will be extremely action and plot heavy. It will be a fundamentally different type of narrative than I’ve ever written before, something far more in line with most other stories nowadays. More of a ‘we’re going to save the world’ type series. I have a lot of cool ideas and I’ve already begun planning it. I think I might actually make it my next big thing after A Warm Place.

Speaking of which…

Plans for A Warm Place have changed a LOT since the beginning. And honestly, while I have a much more solid vision for the series as a whole, it’s still in a state of flux. The thing that’s making me reconsider so much is just how fucking good it’s doing. A Warm Place puts EVERYTHING else to shame in terms of the reception its getting, even Haven. In short: I’d be fucking stupid not to write a lot more A Warm Place novels. Even now, it’s not like I plan to just milk the fuck out of it and stretch it out needlessly for the sake of sales. But I can’t necessarily just stop at the first convenient stopping point any longer. If I have more ideas, it’d be really smart of me to keep going, and I’ve got ideas for at least 12 novels right now, maybe even more. I obviously don’t want to say too much about the future of the series, but I can say that it’s going to get more action-oriented. I feel like I can only write about Chris and the girls wandering around, fucking, surviving, and scavenging for supplies for so long. I mean, that will keep happening, but I am aware that I’ll need more of a plot. And I have one! And another one for after that, and one more after that.

The current plan is to keep writing A Warm Place as fast as I can, while simultaneously beginning work on the new Post-Apocalyptic Series in the background. Ultimately, I’ll launch it and try to get people to start reading it while also beginning to wind down A Warm Place novels, and then the transition between the two series will hopefully not be too much of a financial burden on me sales-wise.

The only other thing I want to talk about is the wildcard. There’s always a wildcard with me, because I have a lot of ideas and poor self control. I REALLY want to write a goddamned caveman primeval harem story, and while I have one planned for my new pen name, it’s obvious to me that I won’t get around to it for a year, maybe two, possibly even three. So I’m seriously considering writing a more basic, low-stakes series set in that same universe.

Would you read that? I don’t want to talk too much about it, but I don’t like blindsiding people so I’ll say it’s not like a straight-up 15,000 BCE caveman style harem because I don’t think I’m skilled enough to pull that off. More imagine caveman level society in a world with a few different races and some basic magic. Because I honestly really just want to write some cool village-building, resource-gathering, survival-harem caveman series for fun.

Let me know what you think. For now, onwards with A Warm Place.