Since folks were asking about DarkKitten and me, I figured it was finally time that I broke my silence. I ask, as you read this, that you please bear in mind rule one. I firmly believe people are innocent until proven guilty, but, I also can't ignore the evidence, so, here goes.
Just posting a quick note here to let ya'll know we're moved. I only just got internet hooked up today. It's not half as fast as what we were expecting, but it's faster than what I did have so that's something.
Chapter 11 of Magic of the Kingdom will be delayed a bit. The move kind of interrupted us finishing it :-P As always it'll be on Patreon first for a week then we'll post it here.
A few months ago, Piper approached me about publishing Becoming Robin. At first I was reluctant because I always said it would remain free, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I could reach a much wider audience by actually having it published, so I did. :-P It's not 100% the original story in that chapter 1 uses my revision to make the introduction a little more subtle and, IMO, professional.
Bear in mind it was my first novel, so it needed some work, but the... Spirit... *ducks the rotten tomatoes* is the same.
So it just came across my twitter feed that "AMAZON IS HIDING LGBT BOOK REVIEWS!", and my knee-jerk reaction was of course, "WHAT?!"
But then I looked into it, and I think I get where Amazon is coming from on this issue. Namely: not everyone who reads LGBT fiction is "out and proud" nor do they want their Trump supporter anti-LGBT sister/cousin/parent/boss who knows their Amazon profile name, to know that they read/reviewed Tiffany and the Amazon Orgy (Just a made up name... I hope :P)
I'm curious how much interest there would be in seeing Book 4 continued? Seeing as it's set 5-6 years ago, and, to be honest, I was a different person back then. I've grown and changed a lot, and expanded my world view.
To put it bluntly, I no longer live in the past, which, despite plenty of "present' (for the time) references, the story was kind of a throwback to the 90s. Alpine Springs was meant to feel like Full House San Francisco (Robin even moves from the "real" SF as part of that symbolic transition).
Seven years' bad luck. That's what happened to TopShelf ;-) It's been seven years tomorrow morning since I made that first blog post, rambling about crap that I honestly can barely even remember now.
Sorry, but I have a lot on my mind right now, and I haven't posted a blog in awhile. It's not anything particularly bad, just a lot of "Huh" and "Hmm" things. :-)
So an interesting tweet came to my attention just now, and I was kind of surprised not to see it mentioned here on TopShelf.
#TransDayofVisibility
Today is international Transgendered Awareness day. I want to go ahead and post the tweet that caught my attention because it's from someone who's somewhat e-famous.
Meg Turney @megturney
Happy #TransDayofVisibility - Remember, no matter what hatred or hardship comes your way, you have my love and support always. <3
I sleep all night and a write all day... Oops. Sorry. Got carried away for a second there ;-) This is a long overdue blog post, and I'm sorry to say it's not as informative as I'd like it to be, but that's because there's a lot of good things happening that I don't want to curse!
First, let me just say a very happy holiday season to everyone! I know it's been quite awhile since I've posted. It's been a rough year for me, between finishing up dental surgery, dealing with a cyber-stalker, and most recently the CT school tragedy. But I'm not posting this to complain about the bad.
Just wanted to leave a little note here that the projects I'm involved in will be a bit slower for awhile. Specifically stories I'm co-authoring with Ashly (DarkKitten) or editing for her might be a bit backlogged, as I'm currently recovering from oral surgery. Every day is hit or miss. Like tonight I felt great, and helped her edit Punisher 1 in no time :-) But last night and this morning I could barely see straight. :-)
I've got some good painkillers though, and HOPEFULLY recovery should be pretty quick, but I just wanted to post a li'l update that I'm not being lazy or anything. :-P So look for ESWS some time next week maybe, and the rest I'll try not to slow Ashly down too much on :-)
I haven't posted a blog in awhile, or at least I haven't posted a serious blog in awhile :-) Like the title? It sort of came to me after talking with Ashleigh about something that's been on my mind the last couple of days: the "H" word.
Just wanted to let those of you following my medical drama know that there was apparently a clerical error/miscommunication, so no surgery today after all.
Let me just start by saying, I haven’t abandoned writing :-) I just caught a bad case of real-life recently that just won’t let go. The short version is, I’ve been sick, and my hard drive as well as backup external HDD both died on me, so I’ve been the last two weeks either lying in bed, or drugged out of my gourd on strong cold medicine while simultaneously trying to recover any data that wasn’t backed up online somewhere (Thank GOD all my stories were recently backed up on GDocs or I’d be totally screwed right now :-P)
Robinverse has basically blown up in my face, and I now have authors who previously were interested running like hell the other way because I made the mistake of making overt the fact that magic has subtly existed all along.
I promised I'd continue to post Becoming Robin here, and maybe I will eventually finish posting it, but for the foreseeable future, I'm going to step down as a TopShelf author.
Just wanted to let you know what's been holding up chapter 24 of Becoming Robin Book Three. Well, the short answer is, I have a new website, http://www.robinverse.info in preparation for launching the Robinverse as an actual universe!
Yesterday was just a little bit rough, with the combination of medicines having an adverse reaction that both made my stomach turn, and dropped my blood pressure to a dangerous level. Both of those issues were resolved safely and without need for a visit to the E.R. thankfully, and this morning I have to admit I’m feeling pretty good all in all. It probably has to do with this being the first time in two months that I’ve truly been able to “feel” like Zoe inside and out. Let me explain. :-)
Let me start by saying, I'm sorry I worried everyone. I really and truly mean that. I'm going through a lot of crap right now in the real world, but I promise it's been worth it, even if I'm more uncertain now about myself than I've ever been.
I can't promise that any of this will make any sense at all to anyone else; it sure as hell doesn't make any sense in my head right now. It's been a lot of jumbled, raw emotions.
Well, let me get the obvious out of the way first. Our vacation plans kind of fell through. It's a combination of things, but I had a minor medical emergency, and am on extremely powerful antibiotics right now. :-)
But some incredible, incredible good has come out of it. Like the title says, Hell's officially frozen over. I had a talk with my mother about my gender status.
I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be out of pocket for awhile. I don't know how long exactly. I'm going with my parents to see the Grand Canyon, and since we're going to drive it, it's going to end one of three ways.
Wow, where the heck did my last two weeks go? Sorry everyone. I know quite a few are waiting anxiously for updates to Becoming Robin and Boys Don't Cry. I hit a bit of a creative slump lately. It's not that I don't know what I want to write; more like how to do the stories justice.
Back during writing near the end of Book Two there were times when I would write just to write. There were passable chapters with high points, but some of it just felt like it wasn't up to my usual quality, and I'm trying to avoid doing the same thing to both Book 3 and BDC.
Those of you following my main novels, Becoming Robin and Boys Don't Cry have probably noticed I haven't been very active lately. Part of that is that this is storm season, and since I usually do my writing in the evening, that's put a big halt to using the main PC. I finally got Windows 7 on my laptop though I still need to find my MS Office disc for that.
Just letting everyone know that, at least as of this posting, there's something strange going on with Google Docs. New documents are being saved, and you can link back to them directly if you share them or copy the link somewhere, but they are NOT currently being saved under your "Owned by me" area, or anywhere else that I can tell.
Some reports suggest some of the "lost" documents are appearing an hour later, but others never show up at all. Like I said they're being saved because you can link back to them, just not being added to the list. There's a forum thread at Google Support Here
I'm fairly certain I've blogged extensively in the past about how music tends to affect my muse in strange ways, but I just had probably the best example ever of this phenomenon while working on Boys Don't Cry today (Don't worry, I'm still working on Robin too :-) She'll be back soon).
Just a quick note for Becoming Robin and/or Boys Don't Cry fans, I'm still writing, and I'm still okay. :-) There's a lot happening in my life, none of it I'm really at liberty to discuss right now because some of it is business-related, and the rest of it is very very personal, and I respect the other person involved's privacy too much to say anything in public like this. ;-)
What I CAN say is that if all goes well, in the next six months:
So as I'm staring at my stories page, I noticed that Becoming Robin is 4 hits away from 10,000. The next closest is chapters 2 and 3 at around 6.5k so of course hits don't mean much :-) But since Robin is technically one year old at this point (Though her 1 year anniversary is in a couple of weeks) I thought I'd post something appropriate.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
