Axegate Walk

After taking a few days off, I’m back to work on the Ainslie Book That Will Not Die. Silly me, this morning I decided that the opening scene needed a bit more oomph, and I’ve spent the day reworking it. Muses can be such pains in the patootie.

In other news, my list of short story ideas for Jim and Drake has achieved an epic length, along with shorts for Improper English, Men in Kilts, Corset Diaries, Hard Day’s Knight, and Blow Me Down.

I haven’t even started looking at the rest of my backlist, but the ideas for a variety of scenes related to just You Slay Me is vast. Arguably, most of them concern Jim, but there are a handful of Drake’s point of view stories in there, as well.

Just as soon as I’m done with this book, I’ll dive into the shorts with abandon. Question – assuming each book has X number of short stories planned to be written as either alternative POV scenes, or entirely new material (like Jim working before Aisling summoned him), would you prefer:

1. All the shorts for each book released before moving on to the next book.
or 2. Release one short for each book, then cycle back to do the second story for each book, then third, etc. In other words, you’d get a short for You Slay Me, then one for the silver dragons, one for Baltic, on down through the rest of the dragons, vampires, Greeks, etc. until all the books have had the first story before moving on to the next round.

Let me know what you’d prefer.

Here’s a chance for you to influence what I write!

Video version with dogs (because who doesn’t want to watch puppos playing?) here.

I’ve been thinking hard about the fun I can have with short stories/short novellas with regards to existing characters. As I’m deep in a re-listen to my dragon audio books (mostly so I can refresh my memory, but also because I love listening to the dragons), all sorts of fun scenes are dancing around in the empty tuna can that is my brain.

But it also got me thinking that I could write alternate POV scenes from books where I didn’t have the male POV (think the first ten dragon books). Want to see what Drake was doing before he walked into G&T and Aisling called him Puff the Magic Dragon? Need to know how Baltic felt when he saw Ysolde for the first time? What Jim thought of Aisling the first time it met her?

The alternative POV shorts can work outside of the dragon books, as well. Corest Diaries, Men in Kilts, Blow Me Down…all my books written before I started including male POVs are fair game.

But! I don’t want to go to the trouble of writing scenes from ALL the books (which, honestly, I’m thinking about…yes, a short story for Every. Single. Book.) if it’s not something you’d want to read.

Would you read shorts if I wrote them? Would they make you happy to see old friends (and alternate points of view [note to self, learn some swearing in Magyar for Drake]), or would it not be as much fun because they weren’t entire books?

Let me know what you think (you can click on the contact link for my e-mail addy), and whose POV you’re dying to see first.

There are a number of freebie resources that will soon be limited in availability. If you’d like to grab one now, feel free to do so.

• Dragon Book Path
• Axegate Walk Coloring Page
• The Reader Coloring Page
• Dragon Coloring Bookmarks
• Green Dragon Sept Honorary Membership Kit

Despite dragging my feet for what seems like forever, AXEGATE WALK is finally up for preorder. Print versions will be available for preorder shortly, as well.