Newsletter 5/15/26

 

Since my last newsletter a month ago, Kit Kat’s eye got a little better, and then a little worse; I had to have AB euthanized due to Cushing’s-related heart failure; more than one family member has been into and then out of the hospital; and all that stress caused a nasty flare-up for me a couple weeks ago. At this point, I’m John Belushi at the end of Blues Brothers with all the bad news and excuses: “Locusts!”

As a result, book progress has been slow across the board - but it has been progress.

I’m having to do some retooling on what I have so far with Field of Fire, the seventh and final Drake Chronicles installment, so I don’t have updates on that front. Likewise, The Winter Palace is moving along literally a paragraph at a time. Again: moving, but sluggishly.

My major focus at the moment is on Substack updates, both my standalone romantic suspense Don’t Let Go, and the post-Dartmoor novel Inherent Violence.

Chapter By Chapter

My initial plan - and we all know how those go - was to keep multiple chapters ahead and schedule drops so that I didn’t ever run out of content to post. Obviously, that didn’t pan out as hoped. I’m still ahead on Don’t Let Go - with Chapter 13 dropping this week, I’m a little over halfway through the chunk of novel I wrote last year. I’m posting Inherent Violence as I write it, however.

I like posting chapter by chapter because it helps me stay motivated. Smaller, daily goals and posting as a sense of “getting something done” help me stay energized to power through a whole novel. Obviously, the serial release format isn’t ideal for anyone who wants to binge an entire book; it’s not a seamless experience if you need to go back and check details on earlier chapters when it’s been a while between updates. I get that.

But it gives me a chance to keep y’all entertained week to week, so there aren’t long content droughts between books. It also offers a chance to see the rough draft process. I do a cursory proofread before I post each chapter, but the book in chapter form is fairly raw. If I were to ever publish these stories as books, there would be some editorial changes: likely added spicey scenes, streamlining of others, and maybe even some rewrites.

That’s a big “if,” though. I want to do right by my Substack subscribers, so these stories might need to stay forever on the ‘Stack.

Hopefully, your spring is rocking along more smoothly than mine has. Thanks for being here!