Tag: romance writer

An HEA With A Disability

“It’s simply an accident of birth that I’m not even more important.”- Hyacinth Bucket [Keeping Up Appearances] 

 

This snowy Monday morning, I’m thinking about the accident of birth. About taking chances, even so. Keep going when the chips are down, that kind of thing.

For no reason at all.

This week, with the release of Flame For Keeps, I’m doing something I never thought I’d do.

At one point, I never thought this book would get into the hands of readers and I might have screamed into the void.

When expectations don’t meet reality, it can take a bit to get over it and get on with it and with the release of Flame For Foe, that’s what happened. Readers had asked me for a book about Quinn’s little sister ever since she first appeared in Flame For Two. So I expected the release to go well.

It didn’t.

I got my first ever hate mail about a fictional character. A neurodiverse character, who acted like a neurodiverse human didn’t find the warm reception I thought she would. But I love that book and the readers who love Flame For Foe love it and I write for readers who want my books about power exchange relationships with messy characters and spicy times (my unofficial tagline).

But Flame For Keeps was drafted. If readers didn’t like Flame For Foe…how were they going to react to a book with a disabled FMC? I didn’t have my armor patched up well enough to find out and I needed a break from from the Bandit Brothers world, so I paused all projects though I did go back in and lightly edit a few books and I think there was a cover change in there…

So I launched a pen name and released three books before I went back to the Bandit Brothers world. Because Ares deserves a HEA and Josie has been one of those side characters ever since the series started and their story wouldn’t leave me alone.

“Change her…so she doesn’t have a disability.” went through my mind but I couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

Throughout those cameo appearance Josie shows up with mobility aids…except for in Flame For Foe and she as an internal as to why that is…so to change her from being a disabled character to not just because I was a scaredy cat over it? I couldn’t do it.

Besides, there’s a part of me that needs this character with her disability to be in this series and I kind of love her.

But I never thought I would write a character that shares things in common with myself, in this way.

For over a decade I have written about disability and kink in other places before becoming a romance writer, but this felt too raw, too personal. In writing Josie, I had to separate fact from fiction My own lived experiences from my character’s and in doing so, brought me to confront how inexplicably background, socioeconomic status, molds one’s experience of being disabled.

This might be the book that caused the most self-reflection yet and it was hard to write through it at times.

But Josie gets her HEA, the Bandit Brothers Series has another book and I’m going to keep on writing, despite everything. Many thanks to the readers who have waited for this book and have kept me writing.

flame for keeps

 

Thoughts on nourishing the weary creative

We are in the season of “Looks warm out there, but isn’t,” with the nights on their way to lengthening as the wheel moves into the darker months of the year. I’ve been thinking about nourishment and how we eat for nutritional reasons but also for nourishment or wanting to feel satisfied reasons and one thing I appreciate about my marriage as I open my kitchen cupboards and see spices I didn’t have growing up, is the abundance of new food it brought (new recipes, new celebrations).

I made breaded eggplant last night, served with turkey left over from our Thanksgiving, and the idea of that feast feeding everyone now is a really nice one to kind of take on in this chilly morning. Nourishment can be found in simple, unfrilled ways.

Also, thinking about how as a writer, I do better when I know someone is waiting on my words and how as a former blogger, I kind of miss having an immediate audience. November is National Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I’ve challenged myself to blog here every day of November to see if it nourishes some of my writing that I have missed while having a blog. No promises that I’ll be interesting or entertaining, going to do my best to show up here.

For the past few weeks, I have tossed a writer friend pages to read while they’ve tossed theirs at me and that exchange has given me new energy and I got a book done for my alter-ego (ready for betas soon). There is something to this having an audience thing that spurs creativity.

Since I was last here, Flame For Foe has been released into the wild.

Midweek Roll

I went down a rabbit hole trying to answer the question, “how does your disability affect your writing?” First off, which one? *grins.* It’s almost an impossible question to ask because there is no separation between me and my disability. It’s just there; it makes certain things “harder” than my peers or for me to obtain society’s standards, but it’s not an easy thing to break down.

However, for me, formatting is on that list. This is something I want to get better at, and I find it a challenge and I know other people do too, but this is something that because of my disability it’s challenging because I don’t have the base skills and numbers are not my thing; I can’t number as part of my disability, and right and left and directions and inches and centimetres, and all of that ties into graphics and formatting. See? Clear as mud.

Ivy Whitaker has some serious writing skills. Her world-building and emotionally gripping and introspecting characters are off the charts, and I am so humbled by her review of Flame Again. It’s really nice when your peers say kind things about your work, and I weigh it slightly differently, you know? Check it out here: https://ivywhitaker.com/2022/08/17/review-flame-again-by-raleigh-damson/

I am near the end for Dax and Gardenia and I must get words down on that story today. Now that I’ve gone this far with them, I don’t want to leave them but I want readers to fall in love with their figuring it out, as much as I have.