LimFic and Queer Romance Ink

January 4, 2021 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

I ended 2020 by signing up for LimFic.com (Liminal Fiction). I had decided not to, but then the lovely A.L. Lester was talking about it, so I thought why not. LimFic is like Queer Romance Ink, but for speculative fiction.

QRI, if you’re not familiar with them, is a site where authors list their books. If you subscribe to their newsletter, they’ll tell you about new releases, when there is a sale, and other things going on. Liminal does the same thing, but there all books are speculative fiction – paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi and horror.

The other day, I got around to list my books, and I realised something. I was scrolling through my paranormal and sci-fi stories, deciding which ones to add, and…

You think you know what you’re writing – at least most of the time LOL – but listing my books had me realising something.

It Doesn’t Translate – Fated Mated + Interspecies
Black Bird – Fated Mates + Interspecies
Soul Eater – Fated Mates + Interspecies
Mind Scrambler – Fated Mates + Interspecies
Elevator Pitch – Interspecies

Of the five stories I listed, four were fated mates and all of them interspecies! How come I didn’t know that that’s the kind of stories I write?? LOL

On Queer Romance Ink you find queer books – all subgenres. You find my QRI profile here, and my LimFic profile here, if you want to check them out.

Update | Hopes and Dreams

January 3, 2021 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 2 Comments

Goals A new year! I usually have all my goals set for the coming year long before the first of January rolls in – that’s not the case this year. There is so much I don’t know about this coming year that I don’t know what my playfield looks like. I have no idea how much I will work, and therefore I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write.

I’m a goal-oriented person, not competitive, but goal-oriented. So not having a game plan drives me mad.

2020’s Goals

But let’s start by having a peek at what I said I’d do in 2020. I said it would be my clean-up year. All those stories I’ve started and then abandoned when something new and shiny popped up on the horizon… I was supposed to dust them off and finish them.

I didn’t.

I set out to do it, and I fixed Black Bird, which was published in May, but that’s it. I didn’t so much as glance at all the others.

I also said I’d start an M/F name.

I didn’t.

I won’t. I’m not saying I never will. I have periods when I think switching ‘genre’ would be fun. I talked to my publisher about it, and they were on board, but I put it off, and then I had other ideas LOL

Then I said I was gonna publish 6 stories. I published 8 – 9 if we’re counting the 2020 Top Ten Gay Romance anthology. Yay!

I also said I’d write 182.500 words. That’s an average of 500 words a day. Now, I made these plans before we knew anything about COVID-19, before we knew there would be a pandemic.

But COVID hit, and between April and mid-August, I didn’t work. Even after mid-August, I’ve worked a lot less than I normally do, which has given me more writing time.

Aside from the economic consequences, it has shown me what I want to do with my life. I’d love to be a full-time author.

So yeah, 182.500 words, I hit that in July. I wrote 377.038 words during 2020.

Bujo2020

2021 Goals

Okay, so what are my plans? I’ve written that I’ll write 250.000 words this year. It’s less than I wrote 2020 but I don’t know what my life will look like. 250.000 words in a year are about 685 words a day – I should be able to do that even if I’m working. I hope.

The stories… I don’t know. I already have three scheduled. See how vague everything is?! I’m gonna write the third story in the Rockshade’s PID series. And I really should clean up some of the old ones. There are a couple there I’m quite fond of and want to finish.

I’ll leave the yearly goal open, and say that I want to write the third Rockshade’s PID story in the first quarter of the year, and then we’ll see where we’ll go from there LOL

What are your plans and goals?

NaNoWriMo Winner

November 28, 2020 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

Guess who won!!! I actually won yesterday, but I wanted to post about the Black Friday Sale then, and two blog posts in one day seemed a bit much.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done NaNo, and it isn’t the first time I’ve won NaNo, but it’s the first I haven’t freaked out about doing it.

I’ve never written as much as I have this year, and much of it is due to the pandemic, of course. I haven’t been working as much as I normally do which has given me more time.

But it’s also because of my morning office crew. Every morning when I’m not working, I put the alarm at 05:40 – I do when I work too – put on the coffee maker, fire up the computer, and meet up with my writing buddies. For three hours, we write. We have good mornings, and we have not so good morning, but the words add up.

NaNobujo I’m not saying I write 50k every month – I don’t, but I’ve written 52756 words in 22 days. I have 6 days with a 0-word count.

December will be an editing marathon, I’m afraid. That’s my least favourite part about writing – editing. And I almost feel sorry for my beta readers. In a few weeks, they’ll drown in stories again. I seem to create piles LOL