#thirteencovens Saga in 2016

For CURRENT Thirteen Covens info – check out the THIRTEEN COVENS or THIRTEEN COVENS ACADEMY pages! To learn about the reading order, click HERE. Or just go to Amazon and check out the COMPILATION PART ONE, or the INDIVIDUAL STORIES, or the ACADEMY SERIES.

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This post is mostly Audrey Brice updates and news except toward the end. So if you’re an Anne O’Connell or S. Connolly fan, you’re not out of luck, just skim to the end. 😉

So back in 2010 I introduced, to friends anyway, the Thirteen Covens novel. The project was already outlined. It seemed every year would come and go and nothing had happened on the book.  That’s because for five years now I’ve been working on this story without any luck.

Then I got the idea to storyboard it. See, the problem with the book was that by the time the outline was done, I had over forty-eight KNOWN characters. That means characters I knew about up front.  That also means that, potentially, more characters would likely show up during the course of writing.

The storyboard also convinced me that I did not know the background of my “covens” well enough. I mean, I knew who was evil and why, I knew who was friendly, I knew who was neutral and I had a pretty good idea of who might die, but at any time characters can throw a wrench into the plot wheel and cause a plot twist. Of course the point remained that I had no idea about each coven’s inner workings or how members of the coven functioned in that group atmosphere. This meant I was going to have to write a lot of backstory for each coven, but only some of it could find its way into the actual book unless I wanted to end up with a novel that was the size of two.

With all of this in mind, I finally figured out how to manage it last month. I will be writing short stories and novella’s for each of the thirteen covens to give myself — and the readers — some insight into how each coven operates, their backstory, and the characters that make up each one.  It seemed like a great way to navigate it without turning the book into something reminiscent of Stephen King’s *The Stand*. Obviously each little story/novella will have its own plot and resolution. So it’s not just a “sketch of the coven”, these are actual stories about each coven that will give me and you a feel for the characters in each group and how they respond when shit happens.

 

The novella’s and short stories will end up their own book as kind of a prologue to the actual Thirteen Covens novel once they’re all finished, but readers will be able to get each story individually as eBooks as I finish them, too. I don’t want to torture you all (too much).

eBook releases will be starting late this year or next year (officially) with *Lucifer’s Haven*.

The titles are as follows: A Rising Damp, Lucifer’s Haven, Tiamat-Leviathan, Ashtaroth Briarwood, Ba’al Collective, Blackrose Coven, Shadow Marbas, The Watch, Temple Dagon, Temple Apophis, Cult of Lucifuge, Order of Eurynome, Circle of the Black Moon, and Temple of the Magus. All of which lead to Thirteen Covens the novel.

The good news is the eBook,  A Rising Damp,  is already available and has been for awhile now.  It may still have the old cover on it since I ended up having to do a cover revamp now that I know what I’m doing.

 

The announcement of my work on this series does not void the expected October 2015 release of book four of the OTS series,  Ascending Darkness, or The OTS Novella, Rocky Mountain Haunt. 

In other Audrey Brice news – I have a short story “Soul Eater“ scheduled for publication in Burning Willow Press’ upcoming anthology Crossroads in the Dark just in time for Halloween 2015.

Now — in S. Connolly news — I will not have a lot of new releases there this year.  Aside from Daemonic Pacts and Daemonic Offerings (both available), I am still planning to get Wortcunning for Daemonolatry out before the end of the summer. June is my target. Any other releases in the S. Connolly department will likely be random. So keep your eyes open. When it comes to the Daemonolatry stuff I tend to work on inspiration – not so much deadline these days.

Now for Anne O’Connell news. Her Demon Wedding is a few months late. I know – no big surprise. I should just take my release dates and add three months to every one of them and then MAYBE I’d be more likely to hit them. Don’t expect another erotic romance from me (after Her Demon Wedding) until 2016. That one will be book four in the Gilded Lily series, Taming Trish.  I have no other plans for Anne O’Connell titles beyond Taming Trish — at the moment. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more Anne O’Connell books, just nothing that I’m announcing yet.

Of course that depends on the pen-name(s) I decide to put on Tribes of Tara (working title, I hate it, it will probably change) and Danbury Crossing (another working title I hate).  Tribes of Tara is a contemporary romance novel. I’ve been telling my friends at 5 Prince Publishing that I was going to write them a stand alone contemporary romance novel about three friends who find love and healing in Ireland for a couple of years now. Well, this year I was told that they were doing “theme” calls for submissions and that “Irish Eyes” was due by August 15. Basically – it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is!  So I am doing my best to get Tribes of Tara in by deadline.  Not sure if I’m going to put this under S. J. Reisner, or if I will put it under Anne O’Connell.  There’s no bdsm in it and if there are sexy scenes, they certainly won’t be Anne’s usual in-your-face. So… I thought about yet another pen name – but really, I can’t add any more. Right now I’m leaning toward S. J. Reisner with this one.

Danbury Crossing is a 15,000 word (approx) novella about a house-flipping hottie who has a deadly stalker, and whose latest project is a haunted house. How can things possibly go bad? This paranormal romantic thriller is already written, but still needs a solid editing and revision pass. I’ve been considering torturing the staff at several publishing houses with this one just for fun, and I might just do that before summer is out. Not sure if I’m billing this as an Audrey Brice tale, or crediting it to Anne O’Connell. I might just go with Audrey because again, there’s no erotic content. Of course there aren’t any occult themes running through this one either, but I think Audrey can weather that.

I guess I entertain the idea of writing these books as Anne because that’s where my largest reader base is and I know then that the new romantic (non-erotic) fiction may potentially gain its own audience if my die-hard Anne fans read it. At the same time… I don’t want to scare off new, potential readers who may have more mild tastes when it comes to their fiction. So for my existing Anne O’Connell fans — please consider reading some of my upcoming romance work written under some of my other pen names! Especially if you read outside erotic romance!  Just a suggestion there — Outer Darkness (written as Audrey Brice) does have more of that chick-lit feel with some paranormal in it. Of course if you’re not into paranormal thrillers, that may not work for you. 🙂

So that’s where we’re at right now – going into month six of 2015.  I hope you’ve all stocked up on your summer reading! Hopefully a few of my titles are in there. 🙂   Right now I’m binging on Joe Hill and James Herbert, getting my horror junkie fix. Which is why I’m getting ready to do a free fall (later this year) straight into my Audrey Brice work.