Dumping Her Demon: A romantic comedy inspired by Beauty and the Beast – specifically how boring the Beast becomes after he goes back to being human. He’s just yet another pink skinned pretty-boy. Yawn. Why would the heroine ever stay with him? This fun hell-pun filled romp will come out in the Spring. The story has no on page adult scenes but plenty of fierce action scenes, with demons fighting Swiss guards who brought their rocket launcher all the way from the Vatican.

Dragon book: The Dragon book of my heart is still untitled, but it’s with my editor now. I’m hoping to have it in your hands by early fall at the latest. While Latoya, my amazing editor, works her magic I’m already developing the next book in this series. During my hunt for cover art for Dumping Her Demon, I found the perfect cover art for the first and second dragon story. With a bit of luck, I might even be able to get book 2 out this year.

Mallory Mors, Death Witch Books: Rights to this trilogy won’t fully revert back to me until May 2023, but thanks to my wonderful publishing attorney, eBooks may be available again as early as this summer.  Please be wary of book sellers claiming to have paperback copies for sale for more than a hundred dollars. Paperbacks will be back in stock with the eBooks, for a much more reasonable amount.

Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective, Book 4:

A handful of scenes have been written and the outline is coming along for the next Hicks book. This is the book that’s waking me up in the middle of the night to write, so I expect the first draft to go fast.

Along with all that writing, editing, and publishing I’m also going to be moving (again, move #14 to state #5), reading (my goal is 50 books), and starting a new day job. Other things this year: the DragonCon Urban Fantasy track has been kind enough to offer me a place in their Supernatural rewind monthly YouTube series. Watch us live if you’d like to listen to me wax on about one of my favorite TV shows. If I’m lucky, I’ll be speaking at DragonCon in September as well. Otherwise, I’m hoping 2022 will be a quiet, healthy, and productive year for all of us.

If you already own the books, you’ll still have access to them on your electronic devices. If you’re in the middle of the series PLEASE get any remaining books you need before they go off sale on 6/30.

I’m excited to be able to make some important changes and promise the series will return with great new additions.

“I recommend this book. Great characters and a good storyline.”
“I love the concept of a disabled hero/heroines, and I was impressed. Loved it, WILL be looking for more from this author!”
“A solid series starter that has a good blend of action, romance, and world building.”

My favorite:
“If you enjoy reading Janet Evanovich or Laurell K. Hamilton, you should definitely give Rachel Graves a try. You will not be disappointed.”

Of course I’m cherry picking here. Some reviewers were not fans of the amount of steamy scenes. In my mind these scenes are important for character development. The main character, Elisabeth Hicks, has lost limbs and suffers from PTSD. She hasn’t dated in years and feels alienated from the people around her. In addition to showing her connecting with someone (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) these physical scenes show her body working the way it should and being something other than a source of pain or frustration. So important for the story, but not to everyone’s taste. And that’s okay, honestly sometimes I skip the steamy scenes.

The first draft of Dead Man’s Detective was finished in 2009. It was shopped, contacted,  and then shopped around again. Ultimately, I wasn’t willing to compromise on some plot points (mostly related to the succubus) so self publishing won. I worked with three professional editors to ensure the story was up to snuff. By the time that process finished book two, Hollywood Dead, and book three, Missing, Suspected Dead, were well past the draft stage.

Hollywood Dead  will be out on February 14. The cover is finished (and gorgeous) but the blurb is still in work. While the story stands on its own, the relationships have clearly been established. That means the steamy scenes scenes take a bit of a back seat to new mysteries with dangerous Hollywood deals and specters from the past.

P.S. Readers who love steam: don’t worry, there are three passages that will leave you breathless.

I spent a lot of my January deciding what to grow in my life this year. I’d gone back to Romance Writers of America recently, hoping the homophobic response I’d gotten to a bisexual main character was just the voice of a single misguided member in a sea of open, diversity loving writers. Events proved I was very wrong. In January, I cut RWA out of my life leaving more space for me to plant new things.

Seeds take up room, and you don’t know immediately if they’ll grow. You can’t dig them up every few days to see if they’ve sprouted. I’ve been trying new things in my writing, and I’m hopeful those seeds will bear fruit. I’ve gathered a great group of professionals to help me begin self-publishing. I’m scared, excited, worried, afraid, and delighted to move forward.

Those self-published books are barely seedlings in my mind for now, but I have high hopes. I waffle between wanting to tell the world, and wanting to keep those seedlings safely hidden. Because even if they do manage to make it through the cold winter months, they may sizzle under too much sun or drown in too much rain.  A million things could happen to stop my dreams from becoming a reality, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.

Today is Imbolc, St. Bridget’s day, a holiday centered around bright blessings for new beginnings. Imbolc reminds us that even in the deepest winter, with layers of ice on the ground and no sun for days, seeds manage to start. We work in the winter dark where no one can see us, hoping to get results that are impossible to ignore. I hope my work will turn into great reading for you soon, and I hope all your work blossoms into a beauty.

Turns out she was very wrong. Erotic romance is romance where the sexual relationship between the main characters drives the story. You can think of it as a story where the ‘naughty bits’ or ‘spicy scenes’ are the plot instead of being a way to move the plot forward.  I’m used to the mystery pulling the story along while the romance (bedroom scenes and all) are more of a second plot line. Turns out erotica is much harder to write than I thought.

I finished one novella (37k words), abandoned a second (11k words), and got better traction on a third (24k words). The finished novella is a lot of fun, but editing erotic romance comes with its own challenges. I can’t send it off to my usual editors and I don’t have a list of  beta readers for erotica. Thankfully, stories tend to get better with age, so I’m sure when I get back to those they’ll be better for the break.

As penance for the arrogance of my challenge (did I really think I could pull off 6 new finished stories in a genre I’ve never practiced? Oh past-Rachel you were so adorably ignorant) I’ve buried myself in the administrative and business side of things. I’m delighted to say that I’ve got some great cover art finished for the novels I hope to self-publish by the end of the year, and I had two sessions accepted to Moonlight and Magnolias, a great writing conference held in Atlanta each October.

My next trick (I hope) will be to set some goals and getting my writing life back to balance. Shifting from a required creative session every day to the not-so-creative parts of writing threw me for a loop. I’m craving a new routine, something more comfortable and less driven, but that somehow (magically) produces more accomplishments. Wish me luck!

No one but you could eat your bunny.

Which started a competition to see who could make their bunny last the longest. Bunnies ended up horded until a child finally finished the last tiny bits, gloating in front of the family whose were long gone. I can still remember the taste of waxy drug store chocolate and smugness. We had no class when it came to candy choices. More was better. Quality was meaningless. Jelly beans and holiday Kit Kats were all well and good, but nothing was better than the last bit of frozen bunny eaten in June in front your sibling.

Which is how the ear-napping started.

The ears were the most coveted part of the bunny, and one year a pair went missing. Gone. A note left behind proclaimed all bunnies deserved to be liberated from the freezer. Comprised of letters carefully cut out of a magazine with kid’s craft scissors the note heavily implied the ears had been devoured. They hadn’t. Weeks later they appeared again in the freezer, neatly wrapped and untouched, leaving the culprit totally within the letter of the law.

The next year the ears were replaced with a note written in cryptic code that turned out to be Microsoft Windings Font. It looked something like this:

When cell phones brought cheap digital images into our life, we sent photos of bunnies having their ears removed. In our later years, the ears appeared in fancy foil gift boxes.

Circumstances have changed for my family. Chocolate is no longer hoarded. But the ear theft remains. The pranks getting more elaborate each year. It’s a fun, creepy testament to who we are. Happy Orthodox Easter – I hope any chocolate ears you get are where you left them.

The manuscript that came out of my hundred days finished at 180,000 words, roughly three times the length of most manuscripts. Editing it took up most of my year, and it’s not ready to submit yet. Even with all that work I’m still in love.

But it drew me away from creating something new. I’ve admitted before it’s harder for me to edit than to draft a new work. It lacks the same freedom to do whatever I want. Checking editing tasks off a list quickly feels like drudgery, and I’d much rather create. I ended up not finishing anything but that manuscript in 2018.  

Hence 2019’s 100-day challenge (now with goals!):

Goal 1: Write every day for 100 days.

Goal 2: Try something new.

Goal 3: Instead of writing one super-long manuscript, write at least three “tighter” stories.

To satisfy Goal 2, I chose new genre: erotic romance. My editor for the Death Witch series scolded me the stories bordered on too hot. Final edits for Blood, Dirt, and Lies cut about 40,000 words including three sex scenes. Rather than working to avoid that I decided to get it out of my system. Hence, Goal 3, write at least three stories. My general plan is three 60K word novels. My stretch goal is those three plus a 10K short story for each one.

Before you write in any genre you need to read in it, so I stocked my to-be-read pile with erotic fantasy, erotic romances, and erotica. A lot of what I found fell into two types: books that were cruel to women (rape, abuse disguised as dominance) or stories with a few erotic scenes that developed the characters but weren’t integral to the story (not unlike my own books). I went down a rabbit hole trying to find what I wanted: stories about consenting adults, who care about each other, and have hot sex.

Since I couldn’t find it, I started writing it.

Creating sex positive love scenes has been a lot of fun. It’s harder work than writing a mystery or describing a crime scene for sure, but the challenge keeps things interesting. After a month of writing I have treatments for three stories. The first story, which features an adorable puppy named Max who brings the couple together, is 90% done.

I’m a bit superstitious about my writing streaks. I didn’t mention the last one until it was almost complete. So while I’m crossing my fingers and hoping this post doesn’t jinx me, I’m also doing things a bit differently. I’ve lowered my daily word count goal from 1000 to 300 and I’m taking time each day to keep up with the business of writing. My new words don’t mean I get to skip out on editing other works, writing that synopsis, or submitting. It’s a balancing act I’m not sure I’ve got down yet, but so far it’s worth it.

(Apologies to any ardent followers of Chicago style reading this. The rules on numerals vs. spelling out numbers are slippery enough that I decided to post rather than study the options. Mea Culpa.)

I’m sharing this because a friend told me about her own serious health concerns. She hadn’t shared because she didn’t know how people would treat her. I don’t want to be part of that societal silence.

So thank you to my co-workers and family for the care you showed. And thank you, everyone else, for allowing me to be human.

If you need to talk about health or pain or how it changes you I’m here to listen.

It’s been a hard year. I had to make choices. Sometimes I made the wrong ones.

I invested a lot of time and money into things that didn’t turn out. Story lines that fizzled. Inspirational workshops that weren’t.  Critique partners who never called.

As the year comes to a close my biggest accomplishment is my 100 days of writing, and the amazing manuscript it produced.

I love that story. There are dragons and wizards, a romance filled with tension and a maniacal ghost.

I’m also completely lost on how to polish it and market it for sale.

Editing takes more from me than drafting. Writing a new idea grips me with a passion that pulls me out of bed when I can barely keep my eyes open. It whispers in the back of my head when I should be concentrating on other things. Editing is just work. One word after another, cutting scenes I love. Editing makes me doubt what I can do. Writing makes me feel like I can do anything.

That story, the 100-days-dragon-story, was written in hospital rooms, on flights across the country, and on early mornings when I wanted to stay in bed. Editing feels harder.

This year I’ve taken ten flights, had four rounds of blood work and twenty-four medical injections (because there’s a hole in my head), house hunted in three states, put two offers in on two different homes, and walked away from both of them. I’ve struggled with a series of seemingly endless, hopeless, emergency situations at my day job. I moved. Again. (Move #11 was not kind.)

I did a lot of things that weren’t writing.

I gave up on quilting. I resigned my board position and practically abandoned my quilt guild. I dropped to weekly runs, and then skipped running for a few weeks. I tried essential oils to manage the stress and walked away from things to manage my time. I made mistakes.

But I also finished the dragon manuscript. Made some good connections at a writing conference. Met my nephew. Showed off Key West. Went to Disney World dressed like the Haunted Mansion Bride. Had tea in Las Vegas. Redefined what I want in life. Succeeded despite the odds.

I weathered the storm.

Which storm? All of them. At least, so far. Who knows what’s coming next?

Some days I feel broken. Some days I feel bliss. For 100 days, I wrote. I finished something amazing. The rest of the time I edited, struggled to put words on the page, and didn’t finish.

And that was 2018.

I wonder if it’s time to walk away, from writing, my life, or maybe my bad habits but I keep moving forward. Despite criticism and unkindness, knowing that moments of happiness are just as likely as moments of sadness. Keep moving forward, in 2019 and always.

Could I go for a month? Writing every day in February? I’d gotten half way through when my beloved rabbit editor died. I try not to be superstitious, but every word I’d ever written happened with him by my side. Every book, every manuscript, every idea, came into life under his fuzzy nose. When he died after fifteen years as part of my everyday life, all I could think about was my loss. So I wrote about it. Giving my character a funeral to attend, sending another character to the emergency room.

Then came March, and with my first goal accomplished, I wanted to see how long I could keep it up. Except March is a month of tough anniversaries for me. Donalyn, my dear friend who inspired the Mermaid and the Murders, died in March. I’ve lost a few others in March, people who mattered enough that I always remembered them during that time of year. Those memories make me stop and reassess, am I making the right choices? It’s probably not surprising that in March the couple that had been falling so blissfully in love broke up with a screeching halt.

April is a month of new beginnings, and my couple started over. They shared secrets while a dragon chased them down and a serial killer hunted for victims (yes, this book is that epic). I had a thousand reasons to break my streak: work travel, early morning appointments, days when the words refused to come. I adjusted my goals. Sure, I wanted 1500 words a day, but I’d take 200 if I had to. I preferred to write in the quiet solitude of my home, but I could churn out words in hospital waiting rooms, crowded airports, or in between phone calls and online chats. By April, I knew 100 days in a row was possible, and I refused to give up.

And then in early May, I realized I’d hit my 100 days and my manuscript would soon be finished. I’d almost overwritten, coming in at nearly 200,000 words. That’s enough for two slightly long fantasy novels, almost four romances. I cut twenty thousand words but kept writing. I finished at 106 days of writing. I suspect I’ll spend three times that editing, and I can’t wait to get started.