Friday, July 7, 2017

All the feels and ideas for sequels

I'm getting all sorts of feels and ideas for sequels to both Crow Girl and Salome. Not like, extended series like the Mauve books, more like me hopping on stage, having my say, dropping the mic, and exiting stage left. I've been thinking maybe I should just jump on a real stage and grab a mic from someone, but they tend to arrest you for that. If I write these sequels, I can sit quietly behind my computer with my coffee and this fucking cat who keeps trying to sit on my mouse.

I never actually set out to write any series at all. I've actually been reading several series by several famous authors since I was around 13 or so. Mainly, I stole them from my mum or read the back while she was grocery shopping and demanded she buy it for me. My mum let me read all sorts of inappropriate things as a child.

As I am much older than thirteen now, I still read some of these series, almost 30 years later. Now that I'm writing, when I read these series, they kind of scare me. I see they are popular and hell, I've been reading them for decades. But in most cases, these series are all the author writes anymore and they write full time, unlike me.

I kind of think about how their fans would react if they decided to totally switch genres and write something else. Say, a crime writer gets an idea for a fantasy book or a fantasy writer wants to switch and write a political thriller. These authors have a fan base who expects certain things from their books and I wonder if they ever feel trapped by their series and characters or if they enjoy writing them just as much as the first time they created them.

Obviously, I have 0 fan base and I write what pops in my head or what I happened to dream that night. I'm pretty much all over the place genre-wise and that's where I prefer to stay. I had a blast writing The Spirus series and have ideas for future books. The Mauve series is going to follow her complete training until they eventually catch The Arm. I don't know if I'll continue once she's a fully trained agent. There may be something there when I get to that point, but I will keep writing the series until she gets her black belt and catches The Arm. She's only working on her green belt right now, so there's several more books like.

So yeah, the idea of writing a series and it catching on scares the shit out of me. Don't ask me why I have ideas for sequels popping into my head every night when I'm trying to sleep, but they are. I'm getting faster at writing, so the Crow Girl and Salome sequel may end up happening between Mauve books. I have no idea if these sequels keep popping into my head because my latest books are a lot shorter than my first three and maybe I'm just not FINISHED with it when I think I am. Maybe when I think I'm done, I need to stick it in a ziplock baggie in the fridge to marinate for a few days or go sit in the corner with a dunce cap on until I'm SURE I've said everything I wanted to say.

Oh, and by the way, Mauve: Origins is back to being perma free on Amazon now that my KU enrollment is up. I'm going to say don't go download it because it you like it, you may download the other books, then other people might do the same and people might start expecting things from me.

I'm going to go sit awkwardly in the corner with my dunce cap now

It is hot as fuck

So, my air conditioner is still broken. Why isn't is fixed yet? That's a good fucking question.

Last week, I paid a service fee for a well rated company on google to come out and run a diagnostic. Dude proceeds to smoke in front of a freon leak and hit on me until he asks how old I am and finds out I'm 14 years older than he thinks I am. Dude gets into my attic and claims I'm low on coolant because there's a leak in my air handler in the attic. Claims the coil in the attic is incompatible with the compressor outside, even though the company who put it in, like, the dude used to date my sister and knows better than to piss either of us off and fuck up my house.

The air handler in the attic was just installed in 2014 and I know the parts are still under warranty, even if the labor is not. Dude wants to spray shit to stop the leak and quotes me 3 times my mortgage for coolant since they don't technically make it anymore. I tell dude to check the warranty and send him on his way. He claims he will call me in 10 minutes with warranty info.

It's been a WEEK and no one at that company has felt the need to make a 2 minute phone call to give my serial to the company that needs to verify the warranty. I've called and spoken to the service manager who verifies that shit. Excuses I was given were that it was a holiday, which is valid, and that he needed to talk to the rep at my house first, which is stupid because I told him everything the rep told me and I had serials for everything.

I got fed up yesterday and called a second company, gave them my serials, and they are supposed to call me back. Four hours later, no call. I call on my break and the girl I gave the serials to is gone for the day. Called this morning and maybe they will get to it on Monday.

Meanwhile, it's 88 degrees inside my house, me and my animals are melting, and I have 3 large musical instruments that are going horribly out of tune the longer it stays hot in here. I can't tune the piano myself and my cello is a whiny little bitch when it comes to getting back in tune. My C string totally hates me.

So I get back on google and start reading reviews. This time, I'm paying attention to the one star reviews. Saw one that basically read what was happening to me, minus the warranty, A company was trying to charge $800 for a $40 part, much like I was being quoted over a thousand dollars for coolant I can buy online for $200. Blissfully, there was a name there. Marvin came out, properly diagnosed my shit, gave me fair prices, and fixed it.

Okay, I needed to locate this Marvin. Marvin was located. I spoke to Marvin. Marvin was leaving to go out of town, but still managed to verify my warranty in under a minute. I don't have any price quotes from Marvin yet, but we are getting together when he gets back from out of town. Marvin is my new best friend for right now after getting shit done in minutes that two different air conditioning companies didn't feel like doing for a week now. Marvin actually picks up his phone when you call, asked me to text him my info, and when I didn't text things he needed, he responded instantly like "Yo, girl, if you want your shit fixed, I need this info"

So hopefully, next week, I will either have a working air conditioner or a plan for a working air conditioner soon. I own a townhouse and whoever built it must not be from 'round here. Basically, in the south, we have hirricane season right when it's in the upper 90's with 99% humidity. If we get hit, you are pretty much going to lose power. As to when you get your power back, that's a crap shoot as to how bad the storm was. Sometimes, it's a few days, but I've lived through hurricane seasons with enough month long worth of power outages. So, logically, you open your windows.

Whichever minion of Satan designed my townhouse gave me ONE window in my entire two story town house. In my bedroom. So I've got a portable AC unit in my bedroom because it has to vent OUT THE WINDOW and that's my only window.

I work from home and I have a total of two phone lines in the house. My bedroom and downstairs. When my two dogs get to playing, the little one makes these noises that I imagine are what a chicken makes if you attempt to pluck it while it's still alive. Or they won't be playing and the little one goes and steals the pit bulls toys. The pit bull is an utterly worthless guard dog and instead of taking her toys back, she sits in the corner and wails until I bring her toys back. Working in the bedroom is out, so I'm sweating balls downstairs