Mysteries Afoot!

I finished Mystery Train today.

Now available for Kindle pre-order.

Files for both the Kindle and paperback editions are already uploaded and ready to ROCK.

It comes out on Halloween. Because, why not?

Manuscript was mostly done already. I was working on chapter titles up until bed last night then realized partway through that the naming convention of starting every chapter with “r” was arbitrary and weird. Not to mention, challenging, with over 50 chapters.

AND it got late, and I had to throw in the towel. Still a fair sprinkling of “r” words, because there were some I really liked. But it isn’t exclusively “r.” And I tried for the most part not to have several of them back to back.

I’m struggling in a lot of other regards, but my writing, my creativity, has been essential to my persistence. It’s how I resist. And hey, queer vampires make me all kinds of happy.

Also… spotted at the grocery store tonight, on a late night emergency run, to acquire butter for tomorrow’s eggs and toast:

I’m pretty happy with how Mystery Train turned out. There are still some ongoing conspiracy plot points I haven’t worked all the way through yet, but meh, I figure that out as I write. I didn’t know who the murderer was right away, either, until I kept going. Eventually, that just kinda made sense.

Suddenly realized I wanted one particular character to be better looking, more charismatic, and sinister, but in a very sexualized way. Since the whole series is pretty spicy, and I just found them fun to write, piling on the innuendo.

Erik does that, too, but much more playfully. He’s (mostly) one of the good ones.

There’s an amazing kid at my job, who also writes creatively. I told them in brief, how I wrapped everything up, because we keep each other updated on our projects, and I was SO psyched about how it ended.

This coworker’s first name may have unconsciously played a part in something I plan to do with the next story. It didn’t occur to me until after the fact, but it feels like a really fun idea. Everyone I’ve shared it with so far was super into it!

Whether the next installation will be a short story, following my initially-planned book-story-book-story pattern, I’m not entirely sure. My coworker was so THRILLED that they may have somehow given me an idea, though, and announced loudly, proudly, and with SO much enthusiasm, “I’m a vampire!”

Reminds me of how at one of my previous jobs, a guy at work commented that due to another coworker’s lack of aging, she might in fact BE a vampire, and I should add her to my story. I altered her name slightly, but she’s in there, as a vampire bartender, in Wishful Sinful. Did my best to imitate her speech patterns, and her overall vibe.

I don’t think there were any real-life parallels or influences at play within “Hyacinth House,” unless you count my running into a TON of character names in my dating app/site activity and having suggested or completed matches with nearly all of them. I think I first noticed the dating app thing some time after publishing Wishful Sinful, because I had posted on social media that maybe discovering a Dorian, Jared, AND a Haven as potential matches, indicated the characters had more to tell me.

Synchronicity at work.

But those were characters who were already a part of the series.

Have since come across additional character names from the series on the apps/sites, but I’m still waiting for a Pierce or a Lenore. We will see! I think I remember finding a Raul, however.

I did pepper in some details from people I have known IRL, this time around. Like the sentence I really liked describing my ex. She’s a bit similar in appearance to two characters in the story, one of them the girlfriend of the murder victim.

Which is REALLY funny, because somewhere in my squirrely writer’s brain, I set them up to vaguely parallel what we would have looked like together back then, but older… so me with black hair (which I sort of have again, but it faded… will have to see what I do with it next… right now, it’s dark brown)… me, kind of goth. My fashion choices showed a stronger goth aesthetic, I think, when I was younger.

My point… if you haven’t already put this together, that means I made myself the murder victim LOL… not sure if I planned that intentionally, but I find it VASTLY amusing. Also, the actions that somewhat lead up to her death, or at least put her in harm’s way, seem very much like things I would do. Weaknesses of mine.

Oh, my. Silly Michelle. Always dramatic.

Also used a phrase someone repeated over and over again to me, while we were messaging online. Guy I never met in person. The image used just once is kinda poetic. So, that made the cut, as something a guy Jared knew in high school used to say.

Were there more? There may have been. That’s what I remember right now.

OH yeah… a rumor that may have been entirely fabricated, about a friend of a friend of…whatever, you get it… someone without a name, but that someone somewhere somehow knew, who may have been a student at my high school. An anecdote about their altered perception of reality. I threw that in, too.

And I somewhat recalled an experience a friend of mine and I had walking in Hollywood, toward the outset of Mystery Train. Two, if you count the other visit I made to Hollywood with another friend, when I got my first tattoo, since I subtly refer to the tattoo parlor, as well.

I got a little ridiculous just adding things that made me smile, like the women in the group buying the organic lip balms I formerly collected like a FIEND. Not named by brand, but if you KNOW the brand, you will recognize them.

They’re massive, scented and flavored, and some of them tinted. Very tasty, and they last FOREVER. It occurred to me something like that would be especially pleasing to a vampire who could no longer handle eating, since they’re all candy/cake/food flavors.

Little Easter eggs, just for me.

I also decided to include more of Jared’s dating history. Nothing of my relationships there, but that was fun to write, too. And it made him more interesting, I think, even to Dorian. So he’s not just a pretty face, with a nice body. But I suppose their flirty banter was also a great part of Jared’s charm, all along.

Oh, Jared. Poor Jared. He attracts unwanted attention on the regular.

Maybe that tracks with The Lost Boys, since Michael seems to hit David’s radar pretty hard.

I still maintain he had Michael curious, if nothing else.

Anyway.

Mystery Train will put me at 10 titles under my name, on Amazon.

I’ll pop a link below. Even if you only check out the listing, I’d appreciate it. Maybe the e-book is a little pricey, but it’s also over 80,000 words long, and that was before I included the final round of bonus content song lyrics. AND it represents a fairly sizeable amount of my time.

But it was most definitely a labor of love. Looking forward to the next adventure!