Death Witch

Scary Author things

By rachelgraves in Experiences, Writing No Comments Tags: Death Witch, the work of writing, writing

Scary author things I have done today:
1) Sent my first manuscript off for a Beta read. I wrote it 12 years ago and worry it’ll never be good enough to publish. It’s the prequel to Under a Blood Moon, and a fan, an actual fan, sent me asking if it would ever be published. She took the time to send that email – my first piece of fan mail ever – so I can do the work to submit that prequel.

2) Send an email to my wonderful editor at The Wild Rose Press (TWRP) explaining the complicated situation around Dead Man’s Detective, the first novel of a trilogy set in the same universe as Mallory. It has much darker themes that I suspect will make TWRP pass. When they do I’ll have to decide if I should keep submitting or venture into the scary waters of self-publishing.

3) Did my taxes. God, there’s nothing worse. I spent about $2000 on writing last year. Ten percent of that was on a custom logo, that I love but haven’t done anything with. About half of it was on classes, critiques, and workshops. Was the money well spent? Should I have invested in other things? Am I making all the wrong choices? In any other business if you spend more than you earn it’s a disaster, but publishing is a long game. Hopefully, my net loss last year gets evened out next year.

But on a very cheerful note, my writing streak continues: I’ve written at least a thousand words a day, every day since Jan 29. That’s 42 days of writing and a total of 98000 words on the new manuscript. That’s more than enough for a single book (most paranormal romance/urban fantasy stories are 75k to 90k words) but I’m about half-way through and having too much fun to stop.

Five Star Review for Blood, Dirt, and Lies :)

By rachelgraves in Blood Dirt and Lies, Reviews No Comments Tags: Blood Dirt and Lies, books, Death Witch

Blood, Dirt, and Lies was available to book reviewers and libraries on NetGalley for two weeks after it was released. In such a short time, and over the holidays, I didn’t expect a lot of notice. I’m delighted to share that it earned a five star review:

Blood, Dirt, and Lies has ended its time on NetGalley, but the you can still read the full review. My favorite part is “The novel itself was fast paced with a fresh/different plot than the norm. The protagonist, Mallory Mors, was incredibly well-written, and even though her character was flawed, it made her all the more likeable and able to empathize with.” I’m grateful to reader Kel M for her kind words.

I’m getting over my usual December funk (so much easier to deal with now that I recognize it each year). Moving into January my goal is to write 20k words on the next Mallory book. There’s no working title yet, but I’m already 20k words in. If I meet my goal I’ll be at the half-way point, and past the dreaded start-of-the-middle stall. Wish me luck!

Who I write for

By rachelgraves in Death Witch Series, Experiences, Reviews No Comments Tags: Death Witch, the work of writing, writing, writing techniques

I want to tell you about Jen. She runs triathlons, and has a couple of kids. I know their names and the races she’s going for. It turned out we like the same kind of books, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, vampire smut, that sort of thing.

I’ve never met Jen.

We follow each other online, and she reads my books. She loves them. She says nice things about them on Goodreads and, most importantly, to me. She’s the first reader who got a copy of Blood, Dirt, and Lies, and she sent me a message filled with love for the characters after she finished.

Someone else I’ve never met but follow online is a book reviewer. They hated my book. They wrote a scathing review about subtext I never meant and don’t think is there. (I promise you, when I say someone is a werewolf, that’s what I mean, an actual werewolf. Werewolf is not a stand in for any race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.) I read their review.

Every author will tell you never, ever read reviews. It depresses you. You can’t argue back. You can’t convince them that, honest, the werewolf was just a werewolf. Nope. The review is their opinion and arguing is a waste of breath.

Reading the review threatened to start me in a downward spiral. If my work was that bad, why was I investing so much of my life in writing? I’ll be brutally honest here, it takes me more than a year to get a book drafted, edited, polished, submitted, edited again, and (finally) published. For that effort I can make as little as eight cents per copy sold (sometimes that number goes up as high as a dollar). I’m not in this for the money, but for the joy it brings when someone loves my characters. If people hate them, why not spend that time doing something less horrible?

And I stumbled. I fell. I dropped into that place where writing doesn’t seem worth it. But I remembered Jen, who liked my book just as much as the anonymous person hated it. (Although Jen’s message to me used fewer curse words.)

I’ll now be writing for Jen. I hope everyone else reads my books, and likes them. But if I focus on everyone else and on all those potential negative reviews, I’ll never get any words written. So if you like a sex scene now and then, along with a good mystery about strong, supernaturally powered people who happen to be diverse and three-dimensional, feel free to join Jen and me. For all those folks that don’t, reviewers or not, it’s okay not to like me. I’m not writing for you.

Blood, Dirt, and Lies, Death Witch Book 3

By rachelgraves in Blood Dirt and Lies, Death Witch Series No Comments Tags: book deal, books, Death Witch, vampires, witches, writing

I’m emerging from my editing cave, delighted to announce I have a release date for the third book in the Death Witch Series. Blood, Dirt, and Lies will be available on December 18^th. While I don’t have a link yet, I do have some amazing cover art:

This book takes Mallory’s story in a bit of a new direction. She’s more experienced at her job, but also handling a difficult case. I wanted to show her working hard on a case that wouldn’t crack. She’s forced to take over more often as her more experienced partner gets stuck dealing with issues related to his supernatural heritage.

I’ve hinted about what Danny is and how it shapes his character in the past. In this book you’ll learn more about him, meet his sister (a formidable woman), and find out about his less than morally upright childhood. The contrast between how he was raised to think the rules didn’t apply to him, but is now the guy enforcing those rules, was one of my favorite parts of his personality. He’s deliberately made a break with his family, rejecting their values. This book gives readers a chance to see why.

There’s also some surprising insights into Mallory’s life as she contemplates moving her relationship with Jakob forward. There are some things the two lovers don’t discuss, secrets they both keep. Over the course of the story, a few of those come out. As much as I enjoyed making Mallory share those painful, sticky secrets about her magic, delicately drawing a picture of her tendency to run when things get tough was a bigger triumph. The Death Witch series starts off with Mallory escaping from her life, and in this book I got to write her thinking it might be time to run away again. (Don’t worry, Jakob won’t let that happen.)

Jakob’s subplot reveals a pair of new vampires – best friends he hasn’t mentioned. A married couple, the sexy, slightly crazy wife, Rowan is a great character to play with. She has a very small role in this story, but it nicely illustrates the divide between how the vampire community behaves and how Jakob strives to live his life.

And, of course, there’s the crime. A confusing, layered, event that starts with a simple murder, but spirals into a larger, darker conspiracy. The victim’s ghost begs for help, but as the investigation goes on her character comes into question. This is the first case for Mallory where she doesn’t really like the person she’s helping, the first case where the victim is (arguably) less redeemable than the culprit.

When I started writing this book, I wanted to move everyone forward in predictable ways – there’s a romance, an unexpected baby, family drama, tension over aggravating relationships, but as the story developed it focused on the difference between how people want to live and the lives they really lead. An unexpected theme of how we respond to the choices we face, either doing what we must, what’s best, or what we want, came out. I’m excited to see how my readers react to that, and delighted to see the story in its final form.

Fire in Her Blood Cover Art!

By rachelgraves in Death Witch Series, Fire in Her Blood, Under a Blood Moon No Comments Tags: books, Death Witch, Fire in Her Blood, writing

I turned in my final edits on Fire in Her Blood at the beginning of the month and received in return a wonderful email with my cover art. Author wisdom tells you not to release your cover art until you have buy links and a publish date. I usually try to follow that advice, but I’m too in love this time. I mean, come on, just look at the gorgeous cover:

The cover shows a young woman standing in the center of a city. She's surrounded by flames as everything burns. — The perfect cover for my story about arson and fire witches. (Click to enlarge)

Things I love about this book:

It’s got a coming out story, where sharing the news is mixed with witchcraft.
Thanks to a fun-to-write Samhain party at the end of the book, I got to show the diverse backgrounds of Mallory’s friends and fellow witches. That means Jew-witches and Latinas, but also a chance to mention Poi.
The story includes a supernatural brothel filled with sexy mythological creatures, which means I got to show how sex workers live in Mallory’s world. (Hint: better than in our world.)
A short subplot contains my favorite friendly ghost, Marcus. The ghost stories Mallory deals with every few days are a joy to write.
I got to drop lots of little hints about the next book. (The draft is in the very early stages.)

Here’s the back-cover description:

Death witch and Detective Mallory Mors arrives at the scene of an out-of-control arson called by a victim who desperately wants to die. Using her powers, Mallory battles the strongest fire witch in town to help the woman cross over. When she’s forced to work with the angry fire witch, she discovers their lives are linked in complicated ways. As all the other fire witches in the city mysteriously lose their powers, the heat is on to solve the case. Saddled with a vampire assault at the local supernatural brothel, a missing person who doesn’t want to be found, and a mess of vampire politics, Mallory struggles to put together the pieces before the city burns.

As soon as I have that precious pre-order link I’ll update this page, and also add a general page to my website.

Oh, and my inbox got a bit more good news: The Mermaid and the Murders was recently named one of “5 Amazing Underrated Books”. I’m working on the sequel now, the Siren’s Stalker, and the encouragement of a good review helps. Actually I’m working on the next in the Death Witch series (no name yet), the Siren’s Stalker, and developing the materials to submit a third manuscript. Lots to do, but cover art like this makes it all worth while.

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