Discover Top Posts Tagged with #diva hustle

I guess now's as good a time as any to remind people I wrote this book

and you can buy it HERE.

#diva hustle #every day I'm hustlin'#except now it's like four days a year #when I remember to hustle #The Ides #writing is easy #my books #Raffles #Rafflesweek #rafflesweek2025 #Sherlock Holmes

Shared my holiday viewing with my little, today, and tried out this new animated Bri'ish fillum on Netflick called That Christmas.

Despite the fact it explicitly goes out of its way to mock Love, Actually, guess what structure this movie loosely follows? That's right, simultaneous but not fully intertwined stories of many characters in orbit around a central location (a Northern English village called Wellington-on-Sea). A bunch of parents go to a wedding and leave their bunch of kids alone together. The "new kid" in town is lonely because his single mum works like mad and his no-good father disappoints him by repeatedly not showing up. The schoolteacher is a strict battleaxe who's secretly lonely. Twin sisters Sam and Charlie are the "nice one" and the "naughty one"--and Santa knows it. The lighthouse keeper's elderly mum is dying, and a huge blizzard not only cancels the town's parade and sing-along, but also separates kids from parents on Christmas eve.

"Naughty" Charlie is one of these spirited, outgoing, pain-in-the-ass children who's always scheming and pranking and causing her straight-laced twin no end of worry. She reminded me of a child I know quite well, on the one hand, but also got me thinking about a couple of conversations I've had with my friend Toni, who is a social worker over there in England, about the English use of the term "naughty" as it applies to children. While in the US we tend to label bad behaviour as "naughty," English naughtiness describes the actual child. Toni often talks (affectionately) about "my naughty kiddos" when he refers to the children he works with; we would never say that here. I do think labeling behaviour is probably less damaging to peoples' perceptions of children; a child who exhibits occasional naughty behaviour is basically the same as every other child, while a "naughty child" is just inherently bad and slightly rotten. Anyway.

The other thing I was thinking about was: if you write (and I suppose, read) enough fic, eventually every piece of media you consume will in some way remind you of something from a fic. In this case, it was the lonely lighthouse keeper, and the lighthouse itself, which both have a hero moment near the end of the movie when Lighthouse Bill uses the light to help find a lost child in the snowy wilds at the edge of the village. Just in case you're new here, I once wrote a fic about a lonely lighthouse keeper, and later expanded it into an entire novel about a lonely lighthouse keeper and his suicidal boyfriend.

You can buy the book here. I reread it about six months ago; still good.

The movie is cute, tolerable even to me, an adult who generally does not enjoy kids' media. Some of you will care that Rhys Da rby's voice is in it. Can't find any gifs; it's brand new this week, I think.

#holiday viewing #Christmas movies #That Christmas #North Hope Cove #diva hustle #every day I'm hustlin'#writing is easy #Youtube

I re-read "North Hope Cove" over the weekend and fell in love with Justin and Daniel all over again. ❤️

OMG I love that. I reread it last spring and I still loved it.

So they ended up buying that house they were renting, since after three years together they thought it was a safe bet. :-) Daniel still drives that Chevy pickup, really held together with rust and dreams at this point, but they traded Justin's orange egg car and his late husband's Suburban for an almost-new Tacoma and a fairly fancy travel trailer because Justin would only agree to go camping if it wasn't in a tent. So far they've camped in all the New England states, New York, Quebec, and New Brunswick, and they have an idea they may spend most of next summer on Prince Edward Island; Daniel's working on the details.

Tugboat and Maggie the Cat are in their dotage, mostly loafing around and living like the royalty they are. There's a couple in Six Rivers breeding some pretty nice Labradors; Justin's thinking of putting a deposit on a puppy but only after his girl Maggie is gone--he wouldn't want her to be jealous of a new girl.

Daniel's still working as the village caretaker, mowing the sports fields at the high school, painting all the trim on the public library's 67 windows and 9 doors. They had to limit themselves to one take-home pie a month from the Coffee Pot when they noticed their middles expanding in that way they do when couples are happy. They can still see the North Hope Light from their backyard.

#North Hope Cove #my writing #diva hustle #writing is easy #Daniel/Justin

You know I reread my own shit on the regular, but I don’t generally reread my original work once it’s published.

I’ve been rereading North Hope Cove this week, and aside from the typos I missed when copyediting. . .it’s pretty good. I love my characters, and the light station, and the New England winter setting, and takeaway pie from a place called the Coffee Pot. Don’t get me started on the casual swearing, melancholy undertones of suicidality, loneliness, and grief, and copious cigarette smoking.

Also, the dogs.

Anyway, reviewing my book as if I did not write it is my self-indulgent moment for the day.

Still for sale, still could use more reader reviews.

(inspired by my fic, Precipice, which a lot of you like the podfic of, from what I see in my comments)

#writing #diva hustle #North Hope Cove #I didn't realise how much I missed Daniel and Justin until I started rereading

Ten minutes’ work on Henry and Victor.

Journal of Henry Clerval.

Victor waxes and wanes, dimming and shining by turns. I know better than to try to tempt him into conversation when a certain shadow falls over the otherwise shining eyes, and so we pass time in long stretches of silence; he allows me the indulgence of holding his hand between my own, and the stroking of my thumbs over his palms seems to soothe him—sometimes to closed-eyed humming, sometimes even into sleep. He sleeps overmuch, without regard to the hour of day or night, and it is only with significant persuasion that he allows me every third day to coax him out of his sweat-stained nightshirt so that I might minister to his hygienic needs. He sits sullen in the metal tub with his knees by his chin and stares through lowered eyelashes as I attend to him. Every muscle beneath his skin slackens and melts under the skimming of my palms and fingers, but once he is dried and dressed there comes over him a sort of jittery frenzy, almost always—the extremes of warm and cool, the buttoning up of his waistcoat tightening him in place, I cannot discern the trigger for the imminent explosion or would endeavour to avoid it—and he paces the rooms, muttering below the level of my hearing. Now and then I catch a scrap of his raving—he, and it, and the beast, and the horror for which I can never repent—but it is impenetrable to me.

#This one was hard #it's been so long since I even looked at it I can't remember where I was or where I am going #had to use two minutes looking at notes #writing #diva hustle #Henry and Victor

Ten minutes’ work on The Ravening.

He could hear it breathing—a weird, loud panting that horrified him. Huh. Huh. Huh. It sounded hot and putrid and his nostrils burned even though there was no scent in the air that would cause it. Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh. Rafe inhaled then, with purpose, as if he were about to speak. For a crazy second, Christopher imagined he might try to talk to the thing. But as soon as Rafe’s breath was drawn, before he made a sound, the rank thing jittered, and bolted. Rafe leapt to his feet and took a few long, fast strides after it. By the time Christopher caught him up, the thing was already out of sight, swallowed in the half-dark or hidden by a fence or beneath a parked car.

Neither of them spoke, and the only sound was the blocks-away swish of tires over the pavement of Main street, and the low buzz of a fluorescent sign on the body shop’s wall. Christopher felt a scrambling need to erase the encounter and his past ones—his lost sleep, his creeping sense that it was only a matter of time before he must admit his reality had shifted, avalanche-like, despite his best intentions—and so shrugged, and sighed. But instead of making a dismissive excuse—perhaps not a dog, but something else commonplace but damaged—he found himself saying, “So. That’s something that’s been happening.”

#writing #Ravening #diva hustle #creative disaster

My novella The Ides is available to buy for your kindle!

And also as a slim little paperback for those of us who enjoy “real” books.

Gentleman of leisure Bunny Manders is running from a gambling debt—and the men to whom he owes it—when he chances upon former school chum AJ Raffles.

Bunny learns Raffles is a brilliant criminal—a gentleman thief burgling high society—and they rekindle a mutual affection. In a rustic village, the reunited lovers meet detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr John Watson.

To rescue Bunny from financial ruin and physical harm, Raffles weaves threads of deceit, romance, and robbery to dazzle Holmes and intercept a delivery of precious gems. But intrigue can have tragic consequences, and before Raffles and Bunny can return to London with their prize a new disaster looms, so Bunny must rush to save Raffles from a violent end.

This story was previously posted the AO3 under the same title. Revisions for wider publication include removal of potentially copyrighted material, and Sherlock Holmes no longer dies in the story! To coin a phrase–just this once, everybody lives!

Please enjoy, and leave an Amazon star review if you do!

#I'll only reblob this once more I promise #I know it's not most of y'alls jam #but not for nothing if you ever told me I'd read anything you write it would be nice if you'd splash out three bucks for this #I do the same for y'all #diva hustle