Arctic Light

I've been working on book edits and didn't have spare brain cells to mention it, but I had a book out last week!

Moose Madness (published as Mar Delaney) appeared in the Her Wild Soulmate anthology a couple of years ago, so most of you have probably read it - this is the moose shifter/wolf shifter small-town F/F one. Due to the anthology terms, it's not Amazon-exclusive, so I'm going to go wide with it, but I haven't gotten around to setting it up on other platforms yet. (This will be interesting, as I've been publishing almost exclusively with Amazon and KU over the last few years.) Anyway, if you don't want to buy it from Amazon you don't have to. I'll have other links later.

Due to the book edits/lack of brain cells, I didn't put up a new Watership Down post this past weekend. It will be up in the next couple of days! Or, if I don't manage it soon, I'll just skip a week and do it this weekend.

Also, hurtcomfortex stories were revealed this week! (They are still anonymous.)

I got an absolutely lovely gift, Owen & Ianto locked up together and huddling for warmth, with doctor!Owen and trying to work through their season one issues in their emotionally stunted way. Healing an Injury - it made me very happy and I recommend!

I also read a really great Rivers of London fic in the collection, Last Resort - gen, Peter & Nightingale (with background Bev), that reads exactly like a missing chapter from the books, except iddier.

The general theme for my creative life in 2018 was "diversify." I launched a bunch of new projects and series, and two new pen names (well, one new one plus revitalizing an old one) ... and ended up feeling like I was going 50 different ways and reminding myself, oh right, I don't multitask well! Oops. So basically, I did about half what I wanted to in 2018 (my webcomic suffered in particular). But I have a lot of different things to work on now, so 2019's theme is going to be focusing on the most important of them and making some progress on those.

Still, despite feeling like I didn't get as far as I wanted to, I was actually wildly productive in 2018! I had 5 novels out, and 2 anthology stories, and wrote another novel and a novella that'll be out in 2019.

Here's my 2018 list of publications.

Zoe Chant
This is a paranormal romance pen name shared between several authors. We were trying to keep this under wraps for awhile, but we are now publicly discussing that we're a group of writers, so I can talk about my Zoe projects in public posts.

• Pet Rescue Panther (Bodyguard Shifters #2) - Feb. 2018
• Bear in a Bookshop (Bodyguard Shifters #3) - April 2018
• Day Care Dragon (Bodyguard Shifters #4) - Nov. 2018

The next book in the series, Bull in a Tea Shop, will be out in the first half of 2019; I'm currently writing it. Yes, I'm still having ridiculous amounts of fun with these.

Lauren Esker
This is my personal pen name for paranormal and sci-fi romance.

• Metal Wolf (Warriors of Galatea #1) - June 2018
• "Heart of Stone" - MMF short story in the anthology Two Mates for the Dragon

The Galatea series is my first foray into sci-fi romance. The rough draft of the second book, Metal Dragon, is mostly done, and at the very least I plan to have both that and the third book, Metal Pirate, out in 2019.

Layla Lawlor
My actual name; I finally kicked off getting some of the non-romance stuff out there! I'm really happy with that, even though I didn't get as far along as I wanted to.

• Wayward Myths (Gatekeeper #1) - July 2018
• "Gilt and Glamour" - short story in the anthology It Happened at the Ball
• Kismet: Sun-Cutter - ongoing webcomic

The second Gatekeeper book, Echo City, will be out in 2019; I also plan to work on the 3rd book in the Gatekeeper series, and shift some focus onto Kismet, which is getting to the point where book 2 is starting to wrap up.

Mar Delaney
My new F/F pen name for tropey lesbian romance. I have a completed novella, Moose Madness, for this pen name, but it's part of an anthology and won't be out 'til early next year, so technically Mar didn't get officially deployed in 2018. But I'll have at least one novella out as Mar in 2019.

I decided to buy myself a new Kindle Paperwhite to replace my ancient Kindle with the side buttons. It arrived in the mail today, so I've been setting it up and so far my thoughts are decidedly "hmmm." I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, but I'm definitely not going to toss the old one anytime soon. I expect it'll be nice to have one that's backlit for reading in bed, though!

I had enough fun writing up my thoughts on The Pride of Chanur that I think I might just forget the "book club" idea for the time being, and simply make more posts on the Cherryh books I've read lately. Which one(s) are y'all most interested in hearing about?



*I haven't actually acquired these yet, but they're definitely going to be part of the "read all the Cherryh" project. Apparently the library has them; they've got a good Cherryh selection, come to find out.

In other news, I've settled on Mar Delaney as my F/F pen name and set up a website. Now I just need, you know ... to write some books. (Details.)

Apropos of that, rachelmanija has started a project called F/F Fridays, similar to Reading Wednesdays - post about an F/F book, story, or fanfic rec on Friday. Which I'm going to try to start doing, not every week, but as the mood takes me. (I'll probably post them here and also at Mar's website, to give it some content.) Also, rachelmanija has a poll where you can vote on the next book she'll review.