Anyway, I’m writing the blog post even though I feel this way, because it’s good to face my fears and do stuff, and it’s sometimes the only way to prove to myself that this “wrong” thing that I’m convinced exists, well, doesn’t.

I don’t know when this started or why. I know I’ve been in a bad mood since Falter came out, and that could be because I was expecting better sales than happened. But then I went back and checked out the sales for Shudder, and I sold 50 copies of Shudder the month it came out, and it came out early in December. I’ve sold 30 copies of Falter, and the month of May isn’t even over yet. And basically, what I think I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s actually selling badly. I mean, that’s how Jason and Azazel books sell. I think.

But I can’t process reality properly right now. Everything is distorted. I look at my body in the mirror, and all I see are its faults. I feel like I’m about ten pounds fatter than I was last week. But I don’t think that’s actually true. (I got rid of my scale, because I decided I didn’t need to know how much I weighed.) My pants all fit the same. This leads me to believe that I’m actually the same size, but that I’m seeing myself wrong. I guess that’s just one more thing for me to worry about.

Aaah! What if I’m a fat cow?

(Well, so what if I am? Lots of people are fat and they seem to live perfectly happy lives, surrounded by people that love them. Right?)

Argh.

So, I’m thinking maybe this all started going wrong when I started the Dean Wesley Smith session writing experiment, because now I have no structure in my life, and I’ve been really battling a lot of my ritual behavior, hoping that facing my fears about that would set me free. But, man, I am so freaking terrified.

Okay, so the idea of writing in sessions is that you do it all day long, and that you take breaks whenever you want, and you don’t take any days off. Theoretically, I want to write whenever I want, however much I want.

Maybe that’s asking too much of myself.

Because I like have a hard time existing when I don’t have some way to reassure myself that I’m okay. Like, in terms of how many words I’ve done for the day.

I can tell myself, “You’re okay. You wrote 5000 words today.” Or whatever.

(Except that it DOESN’T work, Valerie. It doesn’t provide any certainty. You have to be okay with the possibility that you aren’t okay. It’s the only way you’re going to recognize that this okay-ness you seek is actually something you made up in your head, and it doesn’t exist. Not just because you made it up, but because an objective measurement for okay-ness in a person is an impossibility. You will never figure out how to be okay, and you will never be able to do all the things that are necessary to be okay. Because that’s IMPOSSIBLE. It can’t happen. You’re going to make yourself crazy.)

I already am crazy.

So, on, um… Friday, I think it was. Yeah. I was muscling along fine. I’d done my session writing for about two weeks at that point, and I thought I liked it. I was doing 7K or 8K a day, and sometimes I was tired but whatever. It was fun. Of course, I was also in a bad mood, and I wasn’t sure why, but I told myself to stop trying to figure it out because I might never know why it happened, and it would go away eventually.

Anyway, something was wrong with the outline for Come Together, Helicon #3, which I am working on currently. (Even though, God knows why, considering it’s a book that even less people want than Falter.) (Actually, Valerie, you have no way of knowing what people want or how well it well sell until you publish it. The future is unwritten.) Right. So, I fixed the outline on Friday, and I took a walk, and by that time it was noon.

And I just…

Didn’t write.

I worked on some ideas for Silas (Assassins #3), which I told myself was a better book to work on because more people wanted to read it. (And I am excited about it. I got all kinds of crazy cool backstory figured out for Silas. It’s going to be awesome.)

But then I started looking for cover images for that book.

And nothing was right. And I did it for hours. It was like I couldn’t stop.

Okay, I really hate looking through endless amounts of search results because I have a hard time stopping before I get to the end. So, I’ll be compelled to keep looking. And looking. And looking. And I’ll get exhausted. And I still will not have found a good damned picture for the front of the book.

I feel, when I’m doing this, like I’m searching for the one perfect image, and I have to keep searching until I find it.

But that’s silly. There is no perfect image. There is no perfect.

Anyway, I didn’t write Saturday either.

And then I started worrying about the cover for this book I wrote called Wuther, which is a contemporary retelling of Wuthering Heights. I have stupid expectations for this book, because it’s a contemporary–probably the only contemporary I’ll ever write (well, never say never)–and I know those sell well. And I want this book to sell really well. So, I have to make the perfect cover.

I’ve made this cover with four different images now, and I’ve spent money on stock images that I then discard because I think it’s not good enough.

And I love playing in photoshop. I do. But I don’t like not being able to stop, you know?

And last night, I made another several covers for Wuther. I started around 9:00. By midnight, I was tired, and everything I had come up with was crap. So I watched Game of Thrones.

And then I tried to go to sleep.

Wasn’t happening.

“You’ll feel better if you fix the cover,” I told myself.

Why do I listen when I’m like this? I don’t know. I’m weak, and I’m desperate. I get so afraid, and my brain lies to me and tells me that if I do these things, it will fix the anxiety, but it actually makes it worse. The only way to make it go away is to face my fear.

So, maybe no one buys Wuther. Maybe no one ever buys a book I wrote ever again. So freaking what? I can deal with that. Stop tormenting me. I don’t care if I fail!

Anyway, I was up until four in the morning, obsessively redoing the cover. Is it better? I have no freaking clue. What’s better anyway? As much as I would like to be able to know with certainty that I’ll attract people with that cover, I really can’t know. I’ll have to wait and find out.

I woke up around 8:30 this morning, and I can’t go back to sleep. But I’m tired, and I’m cranky, and I don’t feel like being creative.

But I haven’t written. (Actually, I did do 4K yesterday). And I’m terrified of not writing, because I already feel like shit about not being okay because I haven’t been writing, and I’ve been in a bad mood, and I can’t make good book covers, and if I don’t write today, then I’ll be…

Nothing.

It doesn’t matter, because there aren’t actually rules. I know this.

So this is my brain on OCD. I’m really afraid of publishing this. I want to do a song and dance about how you shouldn’t judge me for being so freaked about stupid things and how I know that there are people who have actual problems, like starving or bratty children or annoying bosses or deadlines. I know that my life is cake easy, and that I’m blessed and lucky and all of that. I really am grateful for all of that, I swear. And I’m not blaming anyone for the way I feel.

I happen to be mentally ill.

And I’m facing my fear of what you will all think of me by posting this. It’s one fear faced today, anyway. It’s a start.

I sat on a bench in the park. I could see Chance on the playground. He was climbing the slide to go down it again. The first few times I’d taken him here, I’d wandered around with him everywhere. I mentioned to Mina once that it was exhausting, and she just laughed. She said that she took him to the park and let him run off by himself. She sat down and relaxed. The thought of that hadn’t even occurred to me, but when I asked Chance if he minded if I just watched, he was excited to play with the other kids. Since then, I’d spent most of our park trips on the bench. Sometimes I looked stuff up on my phone, read articles on the internet and that kind of thing.

But not today. Today, I was just watching Chance and trying to collect my thoughts.

Things between Azazel and me were not good. They were worse than they’d been before. Before, it had only been awkward. Now, there was actual tension.

I couldn’t talk to her. She didn’t understand me, not really. Her relationship with violence was different than mine. She found it distasteful, but necessary. I found it… exciting. Whenever I tried to tell her that, she always seemed sort of disgusted and afraid. Usually, we made it through that, but right now, we were so messed up that I didn’t want to risk her reaction.

On the playground, Chance sped down the slide, his red hair fluttering in the air. He was laughing.

I was glad he was doing okay.

I was screwed up because of the way I’d been brought up. I hadn’t had the most normal of childhoods. As long as traumatizing things didn’t happen to Chance, then he would be okay. He wouldn’t be like me.

Mina assured me that little boys often got a kick out of the idea of shooting bad guys. She said that his excitement about it was nothing to worry about.

But I wasn’t so sure. The Sons had told me that the people they wanted me to shoot were bad guys. I had a brief flash of a room in a sorority house, dead girls everywhere. I shook myself. I didn’t want to think about that.

Anyway, as long as we kept Chance away from the stuff with the vampires, he’d forget about whatever Azazel had told him. He’d be safe.

I didn’t want to worry about this anymore. I looked around the playground, hoping something would catch my eye and distract me.

Instead, I just saw all the other parents sitting on the benches, standing in groups, leaning against strollers. There were a few other fathers around, but for the most part, they were all young women. They wore sweatpants and crumpled shirts, their faces scrubbed free of makeup. They weren’t here to impress anyone. They were completely focused on their children.

I liked that. I was one of those guys who didn’t much see the point of makeup. It made girls look like themselves—only painted. I kind of didn’t get the point. Plus, there were people who took it way too far, caking their face with all this product until they looked like circus clowns. I’d be happy enough if no one wore makeup at all.

I thought about what the world would be like if it were filled with fresh-faced women. It would be nice. During the solar flare, Azazel never wore makeup. But she did now, no matter how many times I told her I preferred the way she looked without it.

“No, you don’t,” she would say. “I look like ass without makeup.”

Admittedly, she didn’t wear that much makeup normally, so I let it slide. But I still thought she’d never looked more beautiful than back then. I remembered seeing her face for the first time in Jasontown, back when she didn’t know who she was. She was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, and I was so glad to have her back.

Back in Jasontown, no one wore makeup, in fact.

These women would have all fit in there just fine. I’d kind of wanted Jasontown to last longer than it had, long enough for there to be lots of new babies, and a whole generation of people growing up there. I was crazy back then. I was controlling all those people’s minds, taking away their free will. It was wrong, and I know that. But the idea of a place where people worked together and lived in harmony was still a good one.

Maybe I could still do something like that, just through better means. If I didn’t force people to follow me but instead convinced them. I wondered if I could do that. Did I have the ability to lead people, or had all of that just been my powers?

I peered around at the women, imagining all of them looking up at me adoringly while I told them about my hopes for a community of peace and togetherness. I imagined them doing whatever I said, whatever I wanted.

And suddenly, it was all blood.

I was cutting them, hacking them, strangling them, hurting them. They were screaming, and I was laughing at them. And it felt good. God, it felt so good to let it all out—

I stood up from the bench.

Fuck.

So, I should know better. Jasontown was never about helping people, not really. It was about me. Always about my having people to manipulate. To hurt. To kill.

I stalked through the playground, looking for Chance. I couldn’t handle being here anymore. We were going to have to cut this trip short.

He wasn’t on the slide anymore. I turned in a circle in between the swings and the monkey bars, my gaze darting everywhere, hoping to catch sight of him.

A touch on my shoulder. “Did you lose yours?”

I turned to see one of the fresh-faced mothers. She had freckles on her nose, and she was just a little bit chubby. She was adorable. I imagined what it would be like to grab her by the neck and pushed her face down against the ground.

I backed away from her, shaking my head.

And then I saw Chance. He was in the sandbox, a group of little girls all sitting in front of him.

I walked over to him, and I heard what he was saying.

“…so, I’ll be the king, and you’ll all be my subjects, which means you have to do whatever I say.”

I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him upright. “What are you playing?”

He looked up at me in shock. “Daddy?”

I pulled him away from the others. “We’re leaving.”

“But we were just starting to pretend that the playground was a castle, and I was the king—”

“You’re not a king,” I snapped. “You don’t tell everyone what to do, okay? You can’t do that. That’s not how life works.”

He shrank from me.

And I realized that a few of the other people in the park were staring at me. I was making a spectacle of myself, and I was scaring my son for no reason. I dragged a hand over my face, feeling defeated.

“Hey,” I said in a soft voice. “We just gotta go, okay?”

He nodded. “Okay.” But he still looked confused and hurt.

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They never should have woken up from that coma…

Azazel relishes the chance to be on the offensive for once. Chased all her life, fighting one enemy or another who intended to kill her, it’s nice to be pursuing the bad guys instead of running from them.

Of course, Jason doesn’t agree that they’re bad guys. He doesn’t think they have the right to make moral judgments like that. Not after all the horrible things they’ve done. He chooses to stay home and get to know his son, Chance.

Jason spends his days playing with Chance and going to parent-teacher conferences. Azazel spends hers hunting down and killing people who sell Nephilim blood. Jason tries to pretend he doesn’t long for a life of action, but deep down, he misses violence. He craves it.

The strain of domestic life is getting to Jason.

It won’t be long until he snaps.

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If you find that you can’t or don’t want to do any of these steps yourself, then you may want to hire someone. I don’t hire people, but if I did, I would probably find them on the kboards yellow pages.

Step One: Write a book

If you’re having trouble with this step, I suggest checking out Holly Lisle or Morgan Hawke, both of whom have helped me with my craft. You could also read On Writing by Stephen King or Orson Scott Card’s book on writing sci fi and fantasy.

Step Two: Edit your book

Phase One: Content editing.

Okay, basically, first of all you want everything to make sense and match. Don’t change character’s hair color or last name or that kind of stuff.

Any scene in which nothing changes, progresses, or regresses doesn’t belong in the book. And all progressions and regressions must eventually pay off with a change.

There should be some sort of problem in your story, and it should get worse before it gets better. Your main characters should solve the problem, not someone else.

Phase Two: Usage and Spelling Editing

Some people hire someone for this step. Should you? Well, I can guarantee that you either should hire someone or else you should spend a lot of time learning what errors you make. I used to teach high school English, but when I first started self-publishing I made a lot of mistakes.

1-Use a style guide. (I used Chicago. You can find this info free on the web.)
2-Look up everything. Whenever you have a niggling doubt, look it up in the style guide.
3-Expect that you will still screw up, and be prepared to re-edit your first five books because you just figured out you’re supposed to hyphenate heads-up when it’s a noun.

Want an idea of whether you’ll be any good at editing your own stuff? Find the errors in the following sentences:

1-The day to day activities were mundane and repetitive.
2- Hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.
3-1,001 insects were crawling all over me.
4-Her eyes darted across the room, looking for clues.

See ‘em? If you do, then I say go for it. If not, then you may want to either hire someone or spend some time learning.

Answers:
1-Hypenate day-to-day because it is all one adjective modifying activities.
2-In this sentence, the birds are hiking the trail.
3-When a number begins a sentence, always spell in out, no matter how long it is.
4-Her eyes can’t dart across the room. (They’d fall out of her skull.) Use gaze instead.

Finally, your biggest hurdle will be missing words. You need to have your manuscript read aloud to you. Use Natural Reader. It is free. (although it really wants you to buy it and reminds you of this constantly.)

YOU MUST HAVE THE BOOK READ ALOUD TO YOU IF YOU WANT TO EDIT IT YOURSELF. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

Step Three: Covers

Buy a stock image. Put words on it using either Photoshop or Gimp.

If you have no artistic abilities, then follow these guidelines:
-When looking for a stock image, buy the one that stands out to you on the page.
-When adding text, stick to serif fonts and put everything in all caps. This will make you look classy.
-Play with shadowing and outer glow to make your text readable.
-One font per book title. (Okay, two if you really have to. But ONLY two.)
-Make your text big because your ebook has to look good at thumbnail.

I buy my images from istockphoto.com

Paperback covers?
-download the template on Createspace
-Drag your ebook cover over.
-Make a big matchy rectangle to cover the rest of the book.
-Put the title on the spine
-If you want, you can put your blurb on the back.

Step Four: The blurb

Get some people to tear your blurb to shreds, please.

I recommend the squirrels at Absolute Write’s Query Letter Hell, but it’s probably best if you lie to them and say you’re querying the book, because indies are less than welcome there.

Also, you may have to do some posting before they’ll let you post for critique, because they want a give-and-take community.

If there’s no one to rip it up, then remember these questions:
-Who is your main character?
-What does she want?
-What is the way of getting what she wants?
-What will happen if she doesn’t get it?

Step Five: Formatting

Ebooks:
-For simplicity’s sake, simply use the guidelines at the Smashwords Style Guide. That should get your MS word doc accepted everywhere.
-Want to get complicated? Guido Henkel’s html guide is awesome.
I’m just starting to use Scrivener. I hear it’s wonderful.

Paperbacks:
-Use the Createspace Templates, of course! That’s why they’re there.

The end.

My dorm room lit up suddenly. Lightning. Outside. A storm was coming.

I got out of my bed and tiptoed over the hard wood floor of my dorm. It was cold against my bare feet. I peered out the window. Lamp posts lit up the sidewalks outside. I could see wind blowing tree branches around.

But it wasn’t raining. Not yet, at least.

I slipped on a pair of sandals and flung open the door to my room. I needed to go for a walk.

I scampered down the stairs to the bottom floor of the dormitory, and then I ran outside into the night air.

It was warm outside, late August heat. The air was pregnant with rain, muggy and sticky. But the breeze was powerful, pushing my hair away from my face, plastering my white nightgown against my skin.

I closed my eyes.

I had hoped that fresh air would clear my head.

But I still felt confused.

Miss Moss. I heard his voice in my head. I thought of the way he’d looked at me the other day in class. His gazed had raked my body, settling on my breasts.

The wind blew against me, brushing my nightgown against my nipples.

I was aroused from the dream. That was all. It was only the dream.

I started to walk. I’d walk it away, walk into the night wind. The breeze would pound into me, blow on me until it was gone.

Professor Alexander had ignored me ever since that first day. He hadn’t called on me to volunteer again. When he looked out over the class, his gaze never settled on me.

Thunder exploded overhead. Loud. Imminent.

The storm was close. I probably shouldn’t be out walking like this. If I didn’t get back to the dorm, I was going to be soaked.

But I didn’t turn back.

I kept walking.

Miss Moss.It was like he was calling me. And if I was honest with myself, that was what I was doing. I was going to him. Wasn’t I?

Wasn’t I walking down the street where he lived, strolling past the antique, stately houses with their dark windows and looming pillared porches? Each surrounded by dark trees, shadowed leaves dripping down over their eaves?

A gust of wind blew down the street, ripping leaves from the trees, swirling them around me.

My hair was blown into my eyes, my mouth.

I brushed it away, struggled against it.

The wind stopped.

And there I was, standing in front of his house.

He was on his porch, the way he’d been the first time I saw him, as if he’d been waiting for me.

I started for him.

As I got closer, I realized he was only half dressed. His chest was bare. He wore a pair of plaid pajama pants that hung low on his hips. He was chiseled and perfect, just like in my dream.

“Miss Moss?” he whispered.

I climbed three steps onto his porch. I took a step toward him.

He took a step toward me.

Lightning flashed.

I backed up, suddenly unsure of myself. What was I doing? Why was I here?

I collided with the stone pillar that held up his wraparound porch. I leaned against it, grateful for its support. It would keep me upright.

He swallowed. He was all shadows and angles in the darkness, the swell of his shoulder, the line of his jaw.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, he was closer to me.

I could smell him again. The cologne wasn’t quite as strong anymore. There was a hint of something beneath it, his real smell, sweat and spice and desire.

Thunder crashed all around us. The world reverberated with it.

He was close enough that I felt his breath on my cheek.

I looked up at him, my pulse beginning to thrum.

He put his hand on my neck, and for a second I thought he meant to strangle me. My heart sped up at the thought of it, my body tensed to fight him.

But it was a caress, his fingers splayed over my skin, stroking my sensitive skin.

And he pinned me against the pillar as his lips came for mine.

I slammed my eyes shut again.

He kissed me.

The rain poured out of the sky.

I felt the air change as the humidity released itself, fat droplets of water pattering against the ground around us, against the roof of the porch over us, scattered and pounding, echoing my heartbeat.

His tongue was in my mouth. It felt like bliss, like release, like ecstasy. I moaned.

His voice was a tattered whisper. “What are you doing here, Miss Moss?”

I licked my lips.

His hand slid away from me, fingers trailing over the tops of my breasts.

And then I ran.

I stumbled down the steps, into his yard. Rain soaked into my nightgown, pelted my skin. I yanked up the sopping white skirts of it and kept running. I didn’t look back.

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Like your torrid professor-student affairs with a side of gothic magic?

Professor Carter Alexander may have a sharp tongue and a reputation for reducing freshman acting students to tears, but he’s gorgeous. He’s the man of Teagan Moss’ dreams. Literally. She’s been having dreams about him since she was thirteen years old. Yes, those kind of dreams.

Teagan’s been sheltered, hidden away by her crazy aunts and her even crazier mother, all of whom have cautioned her that the man in her dreams wants to hurt her. But Teagan doesn’t believe in their stories of power and evil.

All she wants is to be normal for once.

One night, she’s compelled out of her bed by a force she doesn’t understand. She finds herself across town on Professor Alexander’s porch.

And he’s kissing her.

New Adult Paranormal Romance: Intended for mature audiences due to explicit sexual content.