Yep, Still Bad At Updating

The Booksigning went marvelously! The folks at Title Wave are phenomenal and I seriously can't recommend their store highly enough. It's cozy and close but even I didn't feel crowded. I've been invited back for Banned Book Week to do another reading and another signing.

Other than that things have been kinda slow. I've been working on my health but there will hopefully be some good news about Nibelung in the near future. So look for that!

Book Signing: The Night Before

So, tomorrow is my first book signing as part of an Earth Day event here in town. I'll be at Title Wave Books with some other offers, signing copies of Diary In The Dark and lusting after other people's knowledge as is my wont.

Honestly, pretty excited. And also pretty pleased that it's with other people. The venue isn't huge but it gives me a chance to get my feet wet before I do anything like this on my own. So that's good.

We printed out some booklets with one of my flash fictions --Feeding The Beast-- that I'm hoping people enjoy. I'll put it up here after the signing so it's available.

Tomorrow is going to be long, but tomorrow is going to be worth it.

Consignment! As Though I Were An Actual Adult!

I'm bad at updating this blog! Oh well! A couple of terrible exciting news points concerning, as it says in the title consignments!

Diary In The Dark is available on shelves at select stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico! Currently you can find it at Bookworks in Los Ranchos (which, by the way is a treat? The whole store is packed with books and feels comfortable and close but not crowded despite the intense foot traffic? I fell a little bit in love with it while I was there) and as of tomorrow it will be available at Title Wave Books (Menaul and Wyoming, tucked back into a side street. Also delightful. Indie bookstores are some of the nicest places to just be.) 

In other possibly more exciting news, I will be having my first booksigning at Title Wave on Friday, April 22nd. It looks like it's going to be me and about seven other local authors so definitely a good place to hit up. You can see my shining, smiling face (and my newly dyed hair, it's purple and gold now), pick up some books and talk to some other New Mexico Authors.

Looks to be pretty damn rad.

I'm Getting Married

Not really writing related, except that he inspires me to actually work and has always looked at this as a "real job".
On Sunday I asked my boyfriend to marry me. We'd been talking about it for a while, but that didn't make my nerves any stronger. I stammered through the entire proposal at the museum in the witness of my sister, my dad, my best friend and a couple of dead dinos and he said yes.
So, yes. Very exciting that.

ADHD and Writing.

The question "what are you working on" is often a double-edged sword for me. In addition to the lovely Depression and Anxiety I'm usually dealing with, I have pretty nasty ADHD, so focusing can be tricky. Because ADHD isn't uncommon, particularly amongst the creative types, I thought I'd just formally state that it's okay to have multiple projects going and to work on them simultaneously. This might get tricky if you have deadlines, but when you don't, it's fine.

Somedays, the project you're working on is going to feel like an uphill fight more than usual. You will be staring at the page and you'll have no idea how words work but you'll have a million other ideas.

Start a new thing. Even if you'll never finish it. Take the twenty minutes or so and start your new story. Don't forget the first one, leave that tab open and go back to it every hour or so, see if you can make the words work, but don't stress it if you start something new.

Right now, my primary project is supposed to be book 2 of Nibelung so I can submit book 1 places. I've been working on The Chained instead because it's been easier and at this moment I can't make The Chained cooperate and so I'm editing Idol-Chatter and writing a blog post.

It's fine. I promise you, it's fine.

Satisfaction: Free Flash Fiction

Satisfaction

by

Aki Grisham

You’ll never forget the first time he walked you to your apartment. You’d only met that evening and you don’t know how you attracted his attention. But you had, and he had ignored the other party-goers to dance with you. He trapped you in his eyes and as the evening drew to a close you could think of nothing nicer than having him as an escort. You could smell the desert on his teak skin and it reminded you of home. He smiled when you reached your door, lifting your hand to his mouth and leaving grains of sand on the skin where he kissed it.

When he let your hand go the warmth of his skin lingered. He said he’d call and you were delighted, if skeptical. Guys rarely bothered to call you back then. And he was attractive and brilliant, and smelled like heat and clean air and sandalwood. It was unthinkable that that sort of man would call you back. A man who towered over you by half a foot and bent near in half in a bow to kiss the back of your hand. The only guys who would have called you had more hands than an octopus and were only in it for a shot at your skirts. Guys who thought that because you were short and plain and had memorized the Star Trek opening you’d bend over backwards to be liked.

You refused to get your hopes up. It was sweet of him to walk you home. What more could you have reasonably expected?

But he did. He called --not by phone but by showing up at your apartment while you were at work. He left behind a lotus flower and a card asking if you were free for brunch the next weekend. You could smell sandalwood on the paper and you remembered the way the sand had scratched pleasantly against your hand during that brief kiss. You remembered the longing you had buried so deep for the desert you had grown up in. The scents back home were different -- cactus and tumbleweed instead of roast meat and spices. You weren’t sure how to contact him to say that you’d love to go to brunch. But you dressed in your best sundress that Sunday and you were surprised and giddy when the knock came and there he was.

You felt unimpressive and small beside him as he led you to the car. People -- total strangers, you assumed -- waved to him. He never waved back. He merely acknowledge them with a broad white smile. He might have been a musician or an actor. A politician. But he looked at you like you were everything in the world worth having. You don’t remember much of the conversation, you remember that you were worried when the waiter stumbled over himself and the way the crowds cleared for you both and how you thought, ‘Like the red sea’ for the first time since you were a child. He chattered excitedly about the latest advances in medicine and psychology and pushed your hair out of your eyes, tucking it behind one of your ears.

He asked to see you again when he walked you home. Hunger, but no desperation, in his dark eyes, and you did what you’ve never done before; you stood on your tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. He tasted like clove and his hands fell to your natural waist to crush you close. You could feel the aeons in that kiss. Something scintillating and dark curled up in your brain and you wanted to run away, but you were transfixed by a pleasantly tingling sense of trepidation. When you pulled away you wanted to chide yourself for being like everyone else. Rushing into things. How many women had thrown themselves at this man? How many men had? Would he forget you now that you were like everyone else? Now that you were no longer special?

He kissed away your concerns and curled one hand up around the back of your neck. “If you let me,” he purred and his voice was sinister and chocolate-rich, “I will take everything you offer. I am a greedy sort of man.”

You had him six times that night, and by the time you fell asleep against him, you were sore and almost certainly bruised but you felt soft and shiny and new. You were certain he’d be gone when you woke up. Certain that now he’d had you, he would leave. You could be this man’s conquest. He was yours, after all.  

Your nightmares were legendary that night. Filled to the point of bursting with locusts and shadows that twisted and bit and tore. You were held to the sheets by choking black tendrils of woodsmoke, and you could taste blood and ash in your throat. You couldn’t even scream, lying there transfixed and not quite dreaming until he woke you up. His fingers traced patterns down your arms and you felt sand, soothing and hot against your skin. You buried your face against his chest and breathed in heat and sandalwood and sweat.

“Are you alright?”

“J-just a dream,” you managed, and he kissed your forehead and apologized before pulling you tight against him. Your dreams were worse and when the serpent devoured you, you slipped into an unending, conscious blackness until you were startled awake by lips against your own and a voice saying he was going to use your shower.

You were dating within the week. Your nightmares were vivid and agonizing and you found that you no longer noticed little pains like paper cuts and burn marks because they were all inconsequential in comparison. He fretted over every incident as though they were his fault. He was insatiable -- hungry and curious and passionate. Almost exhausting, but when you needed a break he would chuckle and kiss your forehead. “I forget sometimes,” he apologized. “Take what time you need.”

You looked on, half horrified as people watched and whispered about him in terrified awe. At night, when he slept soundly and fear of your own dreams kept you awake and frozen you could hear the screams. Around you the world seemed to break and crumble apart but he was just as vivacious as ever. Building and tinkering and explaining things as best he could, sitting you on his lap and whispering into your ear how this particular device worked.

You started noticing his little cruelties. He could silence people with a look, his dark eyes somehow darker and promising unspeakable horrors to the speaker. But those eyes were never directed at you. With you his eyes were always gentle, possessive and possessed in equal measure.

People left his conferences changed. Their eyes were dark and they stared past each other when they spoke but always, always they spoke of your beloved with terror and reverence. They spoke of the darkness in his eyes and you laughed because his eyes were never anything but bright when they came to rest on you. They spoke of his cruelty, but he was never anything but kind to you, around you. His hands were gentle on your skin and he made you sing in ways you didn’t know you could. Every little touch left your blood humming and your heart buzzing in delight.

They assured you it was a lie. He was too great a man, if he was a man. He was using you and you were the better for the using. Doubt sowed itself in your stomach and turned food to dirt on your tongue. His brow furrowed when he finally asked you about it. How could you tell him you doubted him? How could you tell him what people said, the lies (and god you hoped they were lies) they hissed. You didn’t. You couldn’t.

He was your whole world. How could you have done anything but protect him from your fears?

Around you the city fell further and further apart. The followers --that was the only word you could think of for them, though it felt childish and cruel-- of your beloved grew more and more crazed. You heard about the murders and watched the riots from your window. But it never touched you. Happening so close and so separate from where you were curled up in his arms. He kissed your forehead to comfort and reassure you, but you could feel the curve of his smile on your skin. He laughed as you drifted off to sleep and kissed at the back of your neck. Your passions only grew in those final days. You made love like you were on ecstasy and he held you in his eyes and you were the only thing reflected in their vastness.

Then, one day he pushed a ticket into your hands. “You have to leave,” he said, urgency breaking the normal steady pulse of his voice. Ripples in the wave of sheer personality that was your darling. “Go home.” He begged you, “Go home before I finish my works here and offer up this city.”

You wanted to say that you didn’t understand. But you did. You always had. Ever since you had dreamed of that serpent you had known who and what he was. You had fought it. Denied it. But you had known.

“Go home,” he urged again, “I love you, but my love will not save you from my nature.”

What could you do? You obeyed and when you stepped off the plane in the city of your youth you breathed in cacti and tumbleweed and you ached for clove and cinnamon. For heat and spice and warm brown skin. Your feet felt leaden and your ears rang with his voice as though they could will it back into being. That city burned to the ground and you knew that he stood there laughing at the flames. His hunger, his desire, still unsatisfied.

Your nightmares eased and soothed and shifted to dreams of longing. In those dreams he kisses you tenderly and whispers secrets in dead languages against your skin. One morning you know you’ll wake to a lotus flower on your doorstep and you’ll see him again. And he’ll hold you in his arms and he’ll take all you have to give and possibly, probably, all that you don’t. He is a greedy man.

But he is a king. Your king. And Kings are greedy.

I did an interview with Pixelmite Studio about Diary In The Dark. 

Author Debut Photoshoot.

While at COSine I was lucky enough to have KM Chavez of KM Chavez Photography with me and they took some pretty incredible photos of my face. 

I highly recommend checking out their Imgur to see the other shoots they've done. 

A slow week or so.

So, because I'm bad at things I'm not updating as much as I ought to be. But, there are a couple of things happening right now. I'm looking into organizing a couple of book signings and getting copies of Diary In The Dark for the local libraries and my old high school. I'm hoping to have The Chained: Bad Dog finished and edited by this summer if not before, but it's being, of course, a little bit difficult.

With luck, however, I'll have a booth at Bubonicon this year. More information on that as it develops.

I went to COSine and then I forgot to blog about it.

This last weekend I went to COSine in Colorado Springs and had a lovely time. There were a couple of let downs, the print house had failed to get my books to the publisher in time and so we had no copies of Diary in The Dark to sell, but that wasn't the reason I went anyway.

I did meet the fine folk at Strigidae in person for the first time and they were all marvelous and supportive. I had excellent conversations with a handful of other authors including Amity Green and Shelly Wright, both of whom were perfect pictures of advice and encouragement.

Unfortunately and in truest Aki fashion I got distracted from one of the panels I had wanted to attend because I got immersed in a game of Sentinels of The Multiverse with my boyfriend, but these things happen.

All in all it was an excellent weekend and I returned home enthused to work on my own projects.

Holding My First Published Work

On a far more sentimental note than most of this blog will be, my boyfriend's copy of Diary In The Dark came in today and it's been  . . . something of an experience. Even with the contract signed and the manuscript edited, even once I had cover art it always felt a little bit like everything could stop. Probably that was the anxiety, but a piece of my brain kept muttering that at any minute Diary could not happen.

Then it went up on Amazon, and that was excellent, but also intangible. It was no more real in that moment than it was on my google drive. (Totally not knocking e-books, e-books are excellent.)

But here it is. Solid and soft and smelling like new book. This was my first chance to see the font Strigidae used for the titles (I love it) and, if I'm being entirely honest, I'm a little overwhelmed. As in, my hands are shaking and I keep sneaking glances over at it like it's going to move or stop existing any minute now.

Any way, I sent Neil Gaiman an ask on tumblr because he's made himself magically approachable (also he's one of two authors I'm following on tumblr and I'm a little afraid of Gemma Files, she's just so . . . neat) and asked if it gets less awe-inspiring to hold your own book for the first time or if his hands still shake. I'm guessing it gets less, but who knows.

Not me, that's who.

COSine Science Fiction Convention

So, this weekend (The 22nd-24th) I'll be at the COSine Science Fiction Convention in Colorado Springs. I'm not attending as a guest or anything, but it will still be my first convention as a published author and so that's terribly exciting.

Also nerve-wracking. Dreadfully nerve-wracking.

But the excited outweighs the nerve-wracking by rather a lot, so there's that. My publisher, Strigidae Publishing, is having their official launch and announcing their first six titles and so that's why I'm going. Meeting my editor in person and talking with the other authors should be a fun and enlightening experience.

Also Jim Butcher is going to be there and The Dresden Files was hugely inspirational to the neo-noir I've been working on.

I am a responsible adult writer building a media kit

The post title is fairly self-explanatory I suppose, but I'll go into detail here in case anyone is curious about what a media-kit involves. If you have wonderful (if meddling) friends who want you to succeed, or theoretically an agent, you will probably be required to make a media kit. This consists of things like business cards and head-shots and other promotional materials. It's been suggested by other websites that you have all this ready before you get published, but I'm going to come right out and tell you that in a lot of cases I think it's better and easier to wait.

Get your work accepted by a publisher first. By working with the publisher you'll know what sort of theme they're going with for your novel and you can branch out from there with your media kit. Don't, however, do what I did and wait until you're supposed to go to a convention in a week to do literally anything about it because you didn't think it was important.

Start with business cards, these should have your contact information and the contact info of your publisher/agent/whatever along with a short blurb about yourself or your newest work, whichever you feel is most applicable. Business cards are surprisingly cheap and actually good for everything.

Business? Give them a card.
Meet someone socially and want them to have your number? Business Card.

It's the classy way of giving people a way to talk to you and an idea of what you do.

Now Available For Purchase: Diary In The Dark

Exciting news! My debut novel, Diary In The Dark has been published by Strigidae Publishing and is available for purchase (both kindle and paper back) on Amazon.com. Available Here. While not a long work, Diary details the apocalypse in three segments: catalyst, climax and conclusion and follows six diverse characters through the hellscape that unfolds in front of them. 

From the back of the jacket: 

There are things we’re not meant to understand. 

It is the bread and butter of daily life that we turn a blind eye to incongruent truths because they push out against our frame of reference, bending it out of shape and threatening to twist it into knots. 

We comfort ourselves with the faint hope that it’s just a dream, just a story, just speckles of dust in the sun. We sometimes believe in God. We believe in nature, in the rotation of the Earth and the constant pulse of the tides. In biology, anatomy and prayer.  But there are cracks in the wood grain, and a gap beneath reality’s front door. Mash’rg, the Maw, whispers just outside the window, promising knowledge, passion and above all else, an end. 

Jeremy thought the book was just a book. Beautiful, lonely, finding him even as it was found. 

Lizzie was confident in three things, death, gravity and her younger brother. These three things couldn’t, wouldn’t fail. 

Andrew only knew that the sun would rise in the morning, every morning, no matter how bleak and black the night had been. 

They were wrong. 

We were all wrong.