One Hot Mess

First, the Anti-Nano news. we have a community to bring together Anti-Nano, Winter-Write-A-Thon, and Springathon, so if you're interested in any or all of these awesome writing comms, check out squidathon and sign up! Anti-Nano is just around the corner after all.

Now, DARK HUNT. If you've missed any of the blog tour stops so far, I've been at:

Whipped Cream
My own blog
Sara's Urban Fantasy Reads
Greg Chapman's Darkscrybe blog

You can comment on any or all of these blogs to get your free Smashwords coupon for SILVER KISS, and to be in with a chance of winning masses of cool stuff at the end of the tour! Go say hello so I don't feel lonely ^_^

My ebooks (not just the Urban Wolf ones but all of them) are now up on Kindlegraph, where you can get them autographed by me! So if you'd like a personal message from me in any or all of your Naomi Clark books, check that out. It's pretty cool!

The blog tour continues until November 1st (and possibly beyond!) so please join me along the way. And if you don't yet have your free copy of A Wolf in Girl's Clothing, just leave me a comment here (or at my mirrored Blogger blog if you prefer - they both count!).

In fact, today is very, very specific because it's DARK HUNT release day!



I'm going to be pimping Urban Wolf Book Two all over Twitter tonight, so if you don't follow me, maybe you'd like to? @naomi_jay.

There's going to be giveaways - ebooks, postcards, t-shirts, and all sorts of goodies! I'm doing a blog tour:


And there's going to be chances to win loads of cool stuff at every stop on the tour, plus a grand finale hamper of wonder!

There's also a free short story for anyone who wants it! Ever wonder how Ayla and Shannon first met? Get your copy of A Wolf in Girl's Clothing to find out. Just leave me a comment here, tweet at me, or give me a shout on my Facebook page and let me know you'd like a copy!

You can keep up with all the DARK HUNT goodness at Queered Fiction here, including places to get hold of print and e-copies!

So I'm still hard at work on a million things. Night Breed is coming along nicely, although it feels like a very different book to the other Urban Wolf novels so far. It's a lot more of a slow burn, lots of twisty plot threads, and I'm worried I won't be able to pull it all together. It's not the book I thought it would be, and I don't know yet if that's in a good way or a bad way. Still, I'm on track to have the first draft done by the end of September holy shit is that really only two weeks away? What the hell am I talking about? so then I can send it to my editor and let him tell me whether it works or not.

Speaking of Urban Wolf, we're looking at an October release for DARK HUNT! I've done the blurb and some extra fun bits and pieces, and am pretty excited about the second book being out in the world. It really doesn't seem that long ago that SILVER KISS was released, and now I'm writing book three of the series. Eek!

In other news, as October is rapidly approaching, let's talk Anti-Nano. I'm hoping/assuming everyone who's doing springathonwill be up for it, and maybe some of the people who did wwathonlast year too. I'm planning to throw open my blog in October for signing up - both for returners and any newcomers that might have found their way here since last November, so there'll be an inaugral blog post about that soon.

In other other news, I think I mentioned before I've been thinking about implementing a blogging schedule, like Writerly Wednesday (so I could finally get round to those short story posts), Random Monday... I don't know. I like the idea of it, because as much as I just like blogging random crap as it comes to me, I think I need to get more structure into my writing career instead of just flailing wildly and hoping for the best, and this might be a step in that direction. I'm interested in whether people like that approach from writers or if they don't care either way?

Hey there, eldestmuse , you won a signed copy of AFTERLIFE! Drop me a message with your address and I'll get it sent out to you. Thanks to everyone who entered! I might do something like this again before the week is over, so stay tuned.

In other news, WILD has picked up a nice review here at Aobibliosphere. I love the number of people who have picked up on the Vargulf/Kurtadam etymology - it's not like I've been particularly clever with the words, but I like that other people recognise them too.

Anyway. I'm very nearly done with the edits for my first Damnation Books assignment and plan to wrap that up today, as the edits for DARK HUNT came through on Monday and I'd like to get them done before I go back to work (Argh! Where is this week going?!). I'm really enjoying doing the editorial thing, but I am worried the author will hate me when he gets his book back... I've been tough but fair, I hope. And I've definitely realised that this is the direction I want my career to go in. I've loved getting up early and editing til noon, then writing in the afternoon. It's been hard work, but it's also incredibly fulfilling. 

I remembered the other stuff I wanted to blog about. It's actually not that interesting, but it involves making lists, which I like.

So Kyle is going to stay with his mum for a week soon. Not sure when yet, but early July as we have a wedding to go to in late July. I'm hoping if the timing works out, I can take that week off work and have some "me" time. I'm supposed to give two weeks' notice for holiday, so ideally Kyle needs to book his train tickets on Friday for the second week of July. Even if I can only get a long weekend, I'll take it. I need it.

I have a ton of writing commitments going on right now, and I need some extra time to get back on top of those. First priority is obviously Night Breed, which I have fallen behind on.

Immediate urgent stuff alongside Night Breed is:

Queered Fiction horoscopes (will do those tonight).

Wicked Witchery - the anthology is at the lower word count limit for publication now. I'm waiting for one more author who's doing some revisions on a story, but I'm thinking I'm going to put the end of June as the deadline for submissions. I'm going to take a break from editing any more SM anthologies until Night Breed is done.

Critiquing - I've got two pieces from writer friends I'm reading over and I'd like to get them wrapped up before much longer. Happily for me, they both seem to be fabulous thus far.

Other writing stuff that is not urgent is:

Snakeskin, a novella I've been playing with as a sequel to a novella called Snakebite that I submitted to Damnation Books a few weeks ago
(21st of May, as it happens, not that I'm anxiously counting off the days or anything). Snakebite clocked in at around 13k, so really short, but I liked it and I'm interested to see if someone else likes it, so I thought, why not submit it somewhere? So I did. I imagine Snakeskin will be around the same length, and if the first part gets picked up, I'd like to have the second part ready to submit straight away. I'm about 6k in at the moment.

Blood Romance - a longer novella set in the same world as THE NECROMANCER'S APPRENTICE. It's really low down the priority list, but I do want to finish it and, at some stage (probably next year now), write a second novella featuring Morrow and Evanthe.

Blood and Bones - ideally I'd like to finish that off this year, but having assessed my schedule and thought about where I want to focus my writing efforts, I don't plan to publish it until February 2012, a year on from NIGHT AND CHAOS.

Halflife - I'm planning to pick this up as my next "big" project after Night Breed is done, and hopefully crack on with it during Anti-Nano this year (I'm doing Anti-Nano again, regardless of whether anyone else is).

Other writing stuff I haven't actually started yet but am planning to:

Caged - the second Vargulf book. This is almost definitely going to have to wait until 2012.

Another Ethan Banning novella - I have plans for Ethan. Possibly evil plans.

Two more Theo Kane short stories - PAINLESS is roughly 5k, I think I could manage two more stories that length this year.

Around all that, there will be edits for DARK HUNT (we're aiming for a late summer/early autumn 2011 release as far as I know). I will have to crush my desire to write Arkham Horror fanfiction until at least 2013.

So it turns out there's a novel being released this year called Blood Hunt that features lesbian werewolves and vampires, and it's not by me. I know, right? What are the odds? (It sounds good though; I'm probably going to pick up the first in the series on pay day but that's by the by).

The point is, given the eerie similarities between my book and this one, we've decided a title change is in order. So BLOOD HUNT, the second book in the Urban Wolf series, is now going to be DARK HUNT. Yay! I have to say, I like it a lot. My editor suggested it along with a bunch of others, and it just jumped out at me. It still fits the mood and themes of the book perfectly.

So I guess I've just given away that there's some vampiric action in DARK HUNT. I don't want to say too much more about the plot because we've yet to put together an official blurb, but yes, there is a vampire and no, it doesn't sparkle, isn't sexy, and isn't looking for a soulmate to alleviate centuries of angsty loneliness. And that's all I'm saying about that.

So, to summarise! DARK HUNT, Urban Wolf book 2, coming 2011. Huzzahs!