Getting the final things ready for both DragonCon (and getting everything easy for my sister to care for my mom while I’m away) is very chaotic, so just a short newsletter today

The DragonCon (Sept 3-6) schedule is in the previous newsletter, or you can find it online here:

Instagram post

#Ravenlife — Just a short discussion of nerdy love

Trent and me at the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opening night

I was watching the first episode of Lanterns with my partner Trent (who you all know by now from the pathetic-non-fight-at-the-dog-park story 🙄)

As the show kicks in, Hal Jordan is explaining that in the Green Lantern Corps, Earth is located in Space Sector…

“2814!” Trent says, before Hal can. He tells me to pause the show (he never does this) and says, apologetically, “I knew that. I’m such a big nerd.”

He was, in that moment, honestly a bit embarrassed. All I could do was hug him and explain that his nerd-factor was one of the things I loved best about him.

Cut to later in the episode. The (fantastic!) sheriff is talking about identifying aliens and she says something about “Where are the antennas?”

“Antennae!” I correct her, a beat before before Hal does. Because you see, I might not be the deeply knowledgeable comics nerd, but I’ve read a good deal more science fiction than the average bear, and also I’m a Comparative Literature major, so I care about words and their correct plurals. And, through books, I’ve met my fair share of aliens 👽🛸

Once Hal corrected the sheriff, I turned to Trent, now myself embarrassed. “I’m not sure which of us is the bigger nerd,” I confessed to him.

This is all to say, find a partner who is as much of a geek, nerd, or other weirdo as you are. (Or, if aro, find some similar friends! Or, if poly, collect them! 😉) It’s vitally important to have someone who can meet you on that level, just as important as religion/ethics or sexuality or if you want to have kids together.

Two nerds at the Museum of Fine Arts

On that note, I’m gonna go finish packing and get my nerdy ass to DragonCon. Pictures and video coming up in the next newsletter! 🍽️

ASK ME ANYTHING

From feedback I’ve gotten, many of you really love the stories I’ve been telling you of my life, the things that formed this Raven into the weirdo she is today. At Hellmouth, a few of you came up to the table to say how much you’d been enjoying reading those, and it absolutely made my con 🥰

So I’m putting out the request for more questions for me to answer in upcoming newsletters. Ask me literally anything—you (and I!) never know what the question will lead to me sharing. Like the question about me writing gay male sex scenes turned into a whole exploration of my own gender experiences that I wasn’t even planning to write 😂

Just hit “reply” and drop the question in the email, or if you prefer, message me over on Instagram or Threads. Or hell, even Facebook, if you must 😉

See you in two weeks with the stories from DragonCon, and until then, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Last week I had a wonderful time interviewing fellow vampire author Markus Redmond about his upcoming second-in-series Blood Rising. I have interviewed people a couple times for IG Live, and I wasn’t worried about the talking part, but the whole “getting the app to play nicely so that things run smoothly, the Live begins on time—and I don’t look unprofessional, which is a thing I have nightmares about.

Here it is on YT:

Or watch it on IG

I had a traumatic experience with this when I was with the Bad Old Publisher (henceforward BOP), which I’ve never talked about online before, but I think it’s time to finally tell that story… 💁‍♀️

I had realized by the time the second book (of my three book deal) came out, that BOP was not only going to fail to market my books in any meaningful way, but that too many people at the company did not like or understand my writing. The guy who was in charge of doing the YouTube interviews with each author as their books launched did an interview with me where he told the viewers that “they could just skip the sex scenes if they didn’t like that stuff.”

Here’s my publisher, literally telling the BOP readership that they should just skip reading whole sections of my book 😲😬🤬🤯

This was the same guy who put together the newsletters, and my books were always buried at the bottom, no matter how much great promotional material I sent the company, or what great reviews I was able to get.  

So, for my third book, I asked the company if we could do a Live on launch day, and have actual fans of the series asking questions instead of this sex-negative turnip. They said, that sounds great, and we scheduled everything, and I made lots of fun promo material and begged people to attend.

This poor girl has no idea how badly things are about to go… But at least her lippy is 🔥

They had never done one before, and I also begged the two people involved to do a trial run with me, to make sure that everything was set to work optimally. They refused. “It’ll be fine,” they said, “We’re not worried about it.”

I was worried about it. But there was nothing I could do, as the Live would be going out through the BOP company Meta account.

On the day, I had my interview area cleaned to gleaming perfection. I had my hair done at the salon. I put on my carefully chosen outfit, and did my makeup with growing anticipation.

Half an hour beforehand, I was sitting at the computer, a bundle of nerves. About a hundred people had already RSVPed to the event. I posted the last reminders about it to various places, then waited. About ten minutes beforehand, I suggested to the team we get it up and running and I could chat with people until M-minute.

They tried to set it up. We could see the Live had started, but none of us could login to interact with people who were already there. I started desperately searching for help with the problem. There was nothing to be found online that addressed the issue.

They tried some things. Nothing worked.

M-minute. People started sending me messages that they were in the Live, but I wasn’t there. Don’t worry, I told them, just some technical difficulties, it will be working shortly.

The BOP team was now, all-too-belatedly, trying to problem-solve.

I watched as the people who had joined the Live left, one after another.

At M minus 30, they still hadn’t solved the issue. I told them to just forget it. I was raging mad. Seldom have I been so incandescently angry in my life. All I asked was that we do a quick trial run. We could have avoided this fiasco entirely. A hundred people had kindly turned up because I had asked them to, and all of them had seen me fail completely. (See above fear of not looking professional.)

I didn’t know what to do with myself. Then I remembered there was a punching bag newly installed in the backyard. I changed into gym clothes and took my anger out to the punching bad.

I didn’t yet have gloves to use with said punching bag. But in the moment, that was irrelevant. I punched my anger out and out and out. It took a while to work it all out.

This is what my hands looked like after that.

I Hulk Smashed, but sadly did not have Hulk benefits…

I learned many lessons that day. Probably the most important is that I should always keep fighting gloves on hand in case I need to punch something repeatedly. Second to that is that if you can, you should ALWAYS do a trial run before any important thing involving technology. (I had not needed to learn this lesson in the first place, dammit!) Thirdly was that I needed to leave the publisher, STAT.

So, that’s all to say that even though I did do a wee trial run of Live last week, I was still a very nervy gal in the moments before 6PM 😰 Archie actually did his service animal task—that is, he poked me with his nose to tell me my breathing pattern was concerning to him. But it all went off perfectly, Markus seemed to have as good a time as I did, and hopefully this will go some distance to repairing that stupidly unnecessary wee trauma.

ASK ME ANYTHING

From feedback I’ve gotten, many of you really love the stories I’ve been telling you of my life, the things that formed this Raven into the weirdo she is today. At Hellmouth, a few of you came up to the table to say how much you’d been enjoying reading those, and it absolutely made my con 🥰

So I’m putting out the request for more questions for me to answer in upcoming newslettera. Ask me literally anything—you (and I!) never know what the question will lead to me sharing. Like the question about me writing gay male sex scenes turned into a whole exploration of my own gender experiences that I wasn’t even planning to write 😂

Just hit “reply” and drop the question in the email, or if you prefer, message me over on Instagram or Threads. Or hell, even Facebook, if you must 😉

That’s all for this newsletter. I’m caught up in trying to care for my mom, get everything ready to take Archie on his first flight and then do DragonCon (which is not a small con like his first con, ReaderCon) and keeping up with writing and all the other gazillion author-tasks.

See you in two weeks, and until then, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Wow, this is the first newsletter that I missed my Tuesday deadline since I first moved in with my mom to help her stay at home as her Alzheimer’s progresses. It’s been a crazy period of appointments, and my health has been pretty suboptimal, which is not a fantastic combo…

But there is exciting news! My panel schedule for DragonCon came in AND IT’S SO GOOOOOD

Title: Vampires: Return of the Monstrous
Description: Vampires weren't always tragic, romantic, or heroic — they began as monsters to be feared. Today's creators are embracing that legacy, making vampires that are terrifying again. Our panelists dig into the rebirth of the monstrous undead and why audiences are hungry for it.
Panelists: Clay Gilbert, Eric R Vernor, Kevin Grevioux, Lindy Ryan, Raven Belasco, Erika L Lance(M)
Time: Fri 9/4/26 08:30 pm
Location: Peachtree 1-2 Westin (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Who Could Resist?
Description: What happens when the One Ring lands somewhere far from Middle-earth? Would superheroes, space captains, or anime icons resist its pull—or fall fast?
Panelists: Raven Belasco, Jennifer Liang(M), Judy Stephens, Billy Todd, Laura Grabowski
Time: Sat 9/5/26 01:00 pm
Location: L401-L403 Marriott (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Same Places, Different Times: Historical Urban Fantasy
Description: Our panelists explore supernatural beings and magic occurring in historical real-world settings.
Panelists: Clay Griffith, Susan Griffith, Raven Belasco, Wayland Smith, D.B. Jackson, Karen Bembry(M)
Time: Sat 9/5/26 04:00 pm
Location: Chastain F Westin (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: 15 Minute Mentor Sessions
Description: A chance for budding authors to talk one-on-one with a successful industry professional about business, promotion, the writing process, & career advice. Sign up in the Writer's Track. (Embassy E/F).
Panelists: Raven Belasco, Toni Weisskopf, Paul Barrett, Cathalson
Time: Sun 9/6/26 02:30 pm
Location: Embassy G Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

Please note, these schedules are TENTATIVE. A final schedule will be included in the Guest Information sheet.

Are you going to be at DragonCon? Hit reply to this email and let me know. Maybe we can meet up for a coffee… ☕

Don’t forget, National Book Lovers Day on August 9th harnesses all the excitement bibliophiles feel about books into one celebration and to facilitate that bookish joy, everything on the IIP website ships FREE on that one day: books, audiobooks, and of course our beloved bookmarks 🔖🔖

Here’s the coupon code so mark it in your calendars and use that day to get the book(s) you don’t already have, buy gifts for friends, or swag-up with the leather or gorgeous new stained glass bookmarks!

🥩 The Raw View 🥩 — Unedited Snippets of Raven’s Most Recent Writing

From last’s 5000 word progress in Blood Depths…

We were discussing what to try next when Nthanda’s phone rang. His eyebrows almost shot off his forehead. With this new SIM, only Barqan should have the number, and he flashed us the screen to show it was an unknown number.

He hit the green circle and said, “Hello?”

A female voice. “Why are you trying to find Dr. Aleema Salamé?” He didn’t have to put it on speaker; with our am’r hearing we could listen in just fine.

Nthanda paused and answered carefully, “Dr. Salamé has great knowledge of medicine. I would very much like to learn from her.”

“Take her classes, then.”

“I would, but I am only in Nigeria a short time. And I hope to ask her about some very specialized treatments. She has been recommended to me specially.”

“That is too bad. She is not available.”

“Dr. Salamé was recommended to me by, shall we call her… Madam Canaan.”

There was a pause. “Recommended to you?”

Nthanda stopped, thought about the question, looked sharply at me, and replied, “Recommended to a friend who is traveling with me. By a mutual…acquaintance.” Truly, no one could call Astryiah a friend. She was for herself, first and foremost, and you either were traveling the same path, or you got out of her way.

“Now I hear the truth in your words. Come to Katsina city. She is collecting plants for the herbarium here. This is the address…”

Nthanda wrote it down. I didn’t pay attention because my head was spinning.

When he had thanked the woman and hung up, I stared at him, disbelieving.

“What is it, treasure?”

“Katsina. Is. Where. We. Came. From.”

“Yeah, ironic innit?”

“An eighteen hour drive seems more than just ironic, to me.”

“Ah, you youngers. So impatient. What’s eighteen hours in an am’r life?”

“Once the sun comes up, it’s a nasty fucking headache, is what.”

Viv choked. “She have a point!”

Nthanda chuckled. “We can stop for the day and try to find a place to shelter. But everything will just take that much longer.”

“You can say that because I, as the youngest am’r, will be driving for that shift. You and Viv will be under the sun-protection blankie.”

Nthanda looked pretend-thoughtful. “Huh. It is funny how it always ends up that way.”

And that’s it for today. See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Before we get into the body of the email, let me tell you about a fantastic chance to grab books and bookmarks and not pay a cent for shipping! National Book Lovers Day on August 9th harnesses all the excitement bibliophiles feel about books into one celebration and to facilitate that bookish joy, everything on the IIP website ships FREE on that one day!

Here’s the coupon code so mark it in your calendars and use that day to get the book(s) you don’t already have, buy gifts for friends, or swag-up with the gorgeous new stained glass bookmarks

Snag this fan-favorite with free shipping!

(And no, I didn’t just make this holiday up!)

Readercon was amazing. Here’s a carousel of images and video to prove it:

Instagram post

Gratitude

This past weekend was Archie’s first convention as a service animal. He rocked it like a champ. It’s kinda a big deal…

When I first rescued him, Archie was pretty severely traumatized. I actually took him to an SCA event about a month after he came to me, an indoor event at a hotel with a bunch of people walking around and talking. Archie was terrified. He shook the whole time. Obviously I left early.

Most any trainer would have said he could never be a service animal.

But my trainer worked with me to set up a program to accustom him to being around large groups of people, being noisy and chaotic. We started him with walking in the center of town. He moved up to going to outdoor events. Meanwhile, I put him on CBD to help calm the constant static in his head. And we worked on training at home, and in the woods, and then in town, and then at outdoor events. And then eventually in doctor’s offices and other indoor spaces.

It’s taken two years of consistent work. But Archie made such a good impression at Readercon this past weekend—as usual rising above my expectations and even my hopes.

In the busy vending area, he stayed on his “place” mat like a good boy. He mostly napped. In the busy hallways, he was calmly in his work bag or my arms. No shaking. Totally calm and relaxed, focused on me and his job. He not only did not get in the way of making sales, he actually sold some books by being so damn cute. He impressed everyone who saw him as being well-trained and well-behaved. One of the Readercon conchairs told me that Archie had brought happiness to the whole convention 🥰

If you think I’m patting myself on the back, that’s not it. My amazing trainer and I provided a framework for him to heal and become his full self. But Archie had to choose it. Archie had to put in the work on his end. Archie had to be willing to trust me completely, despite his terrible life before. I give Archie all the credit, because none of the training would have worked if he hadn’t wanted to do it.

Over the past months, I’ve been making sure he knows he has a choice. He can stay home and chill with his buddies Sebastian and Mo, comfy and safe, no stress or pressure. Or he can come with me and be working, actively called upon to stretch his limits and put under the pressure of being a Good Boy in a noisy and chaotic world. Every time, he makes it very clear: “I am your service animal and I choose to be doing the work.”

I am honored by his choice. I do everything I can to make it doable for him, to set him up for success, but the fact of the matter is that he is the one doing the hard part, and he’s doing it out of love for me 🥹

This is the second service animal I’ve had who has defied conventional wisdom that their breed type, size, or background would make them “inferior” service animals. Both Cairngorm and now Archie have risen above all of that to be the best companions and helpers to me, absolutely 100% the dogs I needed them to be. By their own choice (and in Cairngorm’s case, having done things very much his own way 🙄) they could proudly stand beside any German Shepard or Golden Retriever, any dog trained at a fancy service animal organization, and say, “I take the best care of my human and I am a Good Canine Citizen.”

I am beyond lucky. Despite having a lot of hard stuff in my life now and in the past years, the one thing I can say for certain is that I am blessed by my dogs and honored that two of the finest creatures to ever put paw on this planet decided to love me that much.

THIS BOY 💝

Besides my overwhelming gratitude to my beautiful boy, I’d like to shout out a few more people:

My partner Trent, who not only helped with load-in and tear down, but came over on Saturday evening so a very tired Archie could just snuggle with him in the hotel room instead of joining me in my evening networking rounds, which would have been asking a bit much after ten hours of being A Very Good Boy. I know what a great partner I have…but sometimes it still amazes me. 💘

As we fuck around with selfies and ignore the customers 😂

My bestie Lauren of Eclipse Costumes, who gave me three days of her life and worked her fantastic derriere off helping me meet our sales goals, to the point of zombie-like exhaustion for us both by Day Three. Not many friends show up like this, and I am so impossibly lucky! 💖

Meg, of Copper Dog Books, who was the best vending neighbor one could hope for. My Readercon was significantly enhanced by having her to chat with when everyone was in panels and not buying books. What a fantastic way to make a new friend 🥰

I have the month of August off: no conventions, no nothin’! I am planning to finally get a chance to crank forward with Blood Depths with less other stuff getting in my way (so that means less videos and stuff from me on IG and YouTube) and actually reading some books for pleasure!

Yes, we were in Lagos back at the beginning of the month, and we are spending a lot more time in that impressive city because the plot took a turn I wasn’t expecting, and Noosh and Nthanda and Viv are not heading right away to fight the vampire pirates out at sea, but on a Very Important Side Quest (Which Has Really Been The Main Quest All Along). Sound exciting? Honestly, I’m really curious how things are going to work out—and I’m writing the damned thing!

Anyway, that’s all I have to report. I shall be writing and reading all month, and loving every minute of it!

Don’t forget to hit the sale on August 9th (I still have plenty of stock left over from Readercon, because I always buy too much “just in case”) so help me get the books out of my mom’s basement and give me excuses to go chat with the nice USPS staff 😁

See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you probably recall, I’ve been posting up interviews with Amber and myself for the past six weeks, and today is the final one—and of course the spiciest! It turns out that Amber got a bit slap-happy during the recording of one of the sex scenes in Blood Eternal, and starting singing a song about that infamous threesome-in-a-doorway…

While you recover from that, let me drop in a reminder that I’ll be at Readercon this coming weekend, and it’s not too late for you to drop everything and plan to go to one of the very best conventions in the multiverse 🌌🗓️

As promised, That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story is now fully listed on every single available audiobook platform you could want. But I suggest you get it on Libro.FM so that you support independent bookstores, or request it at your local library 🏴‍☠️

I re-released the reel about how the ships in that story were named. If you missed it before, here you go!

Next up, I am now stocked with signable copies of Dracula’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas. And just in time for Xmas in July! 🎁 So order your copy on the IIP website and I’ll sign it special and throw in a nice bit of swag. (Or come buy it from me in the vendor’s room at Readercon!) ✒️📖

Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas SIGNED PAPERBACK

He just wanted to taste love again. Now he’s in bondage to an unknown adversary, being tortured by Christmas carols… Paperback signed by Raven Belasco

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com › products › draculas-christmas

Summertime in RavenLife 😎

I actually took a day off this past weekend! My Best Witch and her partner were throwing a shindig, and I don’t see enough of them, so Trent and Archie and I drove down and met their friends, and it was absolutely perfect. I really enjoyed talking to everyone at the party (this is a rare event!) and the music was fantastic and the food was delicious.

Here’s a shot of me relaxing and not working at all, with my Bestie and with Trent photobombing us! (Do not ask why there is a tentacle dildo in the shot. Some things are better left a mystery. But I assure you that the whole thing was hilarious and watching a piñata get whacked open by a huge silicone dong is deeply entertaining. coff Anyway, if you want to know what it looks like when I find “my people” random dildos could be a part of that at any moment 😂)

Just living in the moment, Raven-style

🥩 The Raw View 🥩 

Your favorite section is BACK! Here’s a snippet for you from Blood Demands of Noosh talking with Nthanda as they are going about the next part of the journey. This comes right after Noosh has had to confront Nthanda about A Really Big Deal. They are in Lagos, Nigeria for this conversation. If you can’t remember why Noosh is off with Nthanda, grab your copy of Blood Triad, or buy one…

⚠️⚠️⚠️ WARNING SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️⚠️ WARNING SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Nthanda laughed out loud. “Luv, no one is as pig-headed as Sandu. Or his patar, for all his sunny smiles. You picked the most obdurate am’r in the world to love.”

It was such a relief to hear someone validate my experiences of the past few years. I sometimes felt like I must be insane, trying to deal with them.

Many am’r had been jealous of me, even back when I was am’r-nafsh, because I was the frithaputhra of two of the most rockstar am’r of all: Dracula Himself, and the aojysht-of-aojyshtaish, the eldest of all the am’r, Bagamil. They would give anything for that intimacy—and the vhoon that came with it.

But of all the am’r I could have had a connection with, Sandu was known throughout history for his stubborn refusal to back down in the face of overwhelming armies of Turks—and he brought that same attitude to interpersonal disagreements. And Bagamil. He’d been alive since pottery was a brand new technology, and that was plenty of time to get entirely set in one’s ways. He had seemed like the most easygoing and chill of all the am’r, when I first was getting to know him. But the core of him was a solid block of will, as unyielding as granite.

I realized with a shock of relief that the fact that I had managed to deal with these impossible beings meant that maybe I was not just the baby, the most neophyte of the am’r. Maybe I had some survival skills I had not fully appreciated. Maybe I was set up for a success in the am’r world, and I wasn’t one hundred percent headed to certain tokhmarenc.

And that’s it for today. See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

This newsletter, your usual #IndieLife and #RavenLife sections are being taken over by news and a write-up of my experiences at the Hellmouth Convention. I don’t think any of you will be terribly upset about this, but if you have ideas for what I should write about in the future for either of those sections, just hit “reply” to this email and tell me what you wanna read from me!

🎉Today That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story audiobook drops! 🎉

As with Blood Triad, this audiobook invites some new voices into the world of the am’r: Carmen Seantel as a perfectly sharp-witted Sadie the Goat and Hel roaring Gallus Mag into life. I couldn’t have made a better choice for either of these characters, and here is a clip proving it:

And the first review of the audiobook has also just come in! 💃

Not all the platforms have listed the audiobook, yet. They all take their own time in reviewing and publishing it, since IIP is a small publisher. For a Big Five, they would jump through flaming hoops to ensure a pub date set by the publisher. But since we are small fish, “when we get around to it” is our lot. 🙄 While by the next newsletter the audiobook should be wide across all platforms, here is the list of places to grab your copy of the audiobook right now:

Last minute update: Libro.FM has just added the audiobook! 🎉

Get Ready for Readercon!

I’m so excited to be back at Readercon this year!

For those of you who don’t already have their tickets, it’s July 9 – 12, 2026 at the Boston Marriott Burlington in Burlington, MA. The Guests of Honor are P. Djèlí Clark and David Gerrold, both of whom are particular favorites of mine! And of course, one of the authors who influenced me most in this world, Samuel R. Delany, said “Readercon is my favorite convention.”

Me setting up for Readercon last year

We had printed 100 copies of Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas for Hellmouth and THEY ARE ALL GONE. 🎉 I’ve ordered more for Readercon, but if you want signed copies in the meantime, hit reply get on the waitlist. Or order them online and bring them next month to Readercon or in September at Dragoncon for me to sign for you…

Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas: A Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series Holiday Story

He just wanted to taste love again. Now he’s in bondage to an unknown adversary, being tortured by Christmas carols…

www.amazon.com/Draculas-Terrible-Horrible-No-Good-Christmas/dp/1960942182

Hellmouth 2026 Reflections

Few things go by so fast as a Hellmouth Convention. It’s incredibly jam-packed with Buffy goodness—often to the heartbreaking dilemma of desperately wanting to do two things at the same time and having to choose.

In my case, since I’m working, that makes my life easier because I have things I have to be doing at specific times at specific places, and the decision is already made. But even with that simplification, my head is still spinning with the memories.

Saturday was my first panel of the weekend: Amber Benson and me talking about making the Blood Eternal audiobook and talking about things like the difference between the Buffy universe monsters and the am’r of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series—and which she would rather fight 🤺😁

(That panel was recorded in full and will be posted on YouTube as soon as the processing is done. You know I’ll post it here when it’s ready.)

The rest of that Saturday there were some long signing periods and I got to greet some friends from last year, and meet some amazing new readers. I didn’t quite get a sore hand from signing…but if things tend in this direction, that’s in my future! I can’t wait to get a sore hand from having to sign so many books! That’s the kind of problems I want in my life!

Sunday was a second panel, “Turning Your Passion into a Paying Gig.” It was the amazing artist Keaghlan Ashley and myself, being interviewed by Ray, very much a Host with the Most. It was a fantastic conversation—although Keaghlan got pulled out to do Clem’s prosthetics halfway through. I had wanted to hear more of what she had to say, but Ray and I kept things lively in her absence.

The rest of the day had me mostly chained to the table (they put me beside Amber, since our audience overlaps, and I stuck around for her insanely long lines, because sometimes people wanted signatures from both of us. I don’t know how she does it—no matter how long the line, she has warmth and kindness for everyone. Truly a wonderful human, and example for me to live up to.) But that was fine, and meant I got to chat with not just new readers, but with the wonderful Hellmouth volunteers as well.

The people who attend the Hellmouth convention, in whatever capacity, are uniformly fantastic people. All huge geeks. A high percentage of queerness. Imaginative, passionate, creative, warm, and welcoming. These are my people. I love many franchises (Star Trek, Dr Who, etc.) but I’m not sure there is a better fandom in all of fandoming.

To all of you who are reading this newsletter because you signed up at Hellmouth: I had an amazing time and can’t wait for next year! To the rest of you: it’s absolutely worth going to this convention! You have all year to watch/rewatch Buffy and book your tickets for next year!

Special thanks to Meglet, Lore, and Kayleigh, who are the bestest support team and friends an author could hope for! 🥰

Reunited on the Hellmouth! That’s true friendship 🥰

Ad time! I’m kinda excited that the cool supplement marketing people have found my newsletter and want to put ads in it. This company looks good. I will have to try something from them! And remember, if you click on this ad, even if you don’t buy something, I will get paid! So thanks if you have the time to help 🙂

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See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Huge news first! I’ll be at the Hellmouth Convention in Torrance CA June 12-13.

I will be doing a panel with Amber Benson on Saturday the 12th at 10AM. (I’ll be doing a second panel on Sunday, and there will be some book signing times, too, but those details haven’t made their way to me, yet.)

This is how much fun I had last year, making a new friend in the process:

I love how serious Anthony is. Totally slaying it! 😁

I cannot emphasize enough how much I love this convention. It has the friendliest, most open-hearted people. And they are basically all queer (or very queer-friendly) freaks, geeks, and weirdos. They run the full range of ages, from “I saw this show when it first aired” to “my parents watched this show when it first aired,” and are otherwise a fantastically diverse group of my kind of people.

If you can get to this convention, DO IT. You won’t regret it. (Check that tickets aren’t sold out, however!)

Here’s the two videos of Amber Benson and me in conversation since the last newsletter:

You know, I simply never will fully accept the fact that I just get to hang out with Amber Benson like it’s no big thing. And it’s not because she acts like a Big Star. She’s actually the sweetest, most down-to-earth person you ever met. I’m honestly the luckiest author in the world, because I couldn’t hope for a kinder person or more talented actor to be working with me on the audiobooks. And that’s what I mean about not being able to accept it: her talent is so fantastic, I can barely handle it. Have you listened to the audiobooks? The way she handles all the accents and all the different voices in conversation with each other is just Next Level. I’m an audiobook snob and had really high expectations, and she still rocked my world.

Blood Eternal | Audible.com

The highly anticipated third installment of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series, with Amber Benson returning to bring the story to life as only she can.

www.audible.com/pd/Blood-Eternal-Audiobook/B0GKHPHZQC

RAVENLIFE: Raven’s Coming Out Story ✨🏳️‍🌈✨

I’ve been out as Bi+ for so long that I don’t really think about it. But it’s occurred to me that probably no one reading this knows my coming out history, so it seems a good time to turn back the pages to a 16 year old Raven…

I was a hyper-sexual teenager, as many neurospicy people are, but it had all just been in a het direction. It honestly had never occurred to me that “both and” was an option, and I knew I liked 🍆 so it never occurred to me that 🐈 was something I could also have.

That’s the thing about living in a world where diversity is limited. People as they are growing up don’t realize the glorious array of options that are available for them for living and loving. I mean, I know that’s the whole point, but still, my world was limiting me without even trying particularly hard.

It was a 2AM phone call with my friend M. At that hour, things get confessional. She nervously professed that she liked women as well as men. Pause.

“OK, that’s cool,” I said.

I don’t remember the rest of our conversation, but when we got off the phone, I thought to myself, “M is my friend. I have to be OK with her liking women.”

But how to be OK with it? Being a teenager, with teenage logic, I decided that if I could imagine two women having sex and not be repulsed by it, that was what was needed. (I know, I know. But I was young, OK?)

The first night, I tried to imagine going down on a woman. It seemed kinda gross.

But I was dedicated to my goal. The next night I imagined two women kissing. Their nipples rubbed against each other.

PING! In that moment, my desire for women turned from OFF to ON FULL TAP 🚿

It didn’t take much to get me there 🤣

The first person I told was my friend Jake. I knew he was bi, so that was an easy baby step. I hung out with him after school, at his house. I told him, and he said, “Welcome to the family!”

The second was my little sister. For some reason, I remember that I was taking a bath and she was sitting on the toilet talking to me. It seems an oddly vulnerable place to do it, but maybe it was just to be in a private space our parents wouldn’t walk into? Anyway, she started crying and said, “You’re gonna get beaten up and killed!”

I had to talk her down, explaining that as a bisexual woman I really wasn’t going to get the same level of prejudice and hatred that gay man and trans people face. Two years later, when she got to high school, she joined the LGBT+ group (which of course had formed after I graduated) as an ally.

Me on the ferry to P-town (a gay mecca), senior year of high school. I really miss that peacoat! And look at my Sony Walkman! I was listening to Jane’s Addiction 🎧

Obviously, the next thing was to do something about it. And that was a journey of years…

I immediately had a crush on M, of course. But I was too shy to bring it up to her. And, I found out later, she felt the same but was too shy to mention it to me. There is an amusing memory I have of M being over for a sleepover, us both in the same bed, me wanting her and her not knowing, her wanting me but me not knowing, and us just lying there unable to sleep or actually communicate effectively. In other words, the stereotypical lesbian conundrum.

I headed off to college with the goal of sleeping with women being just as much a focus as studying literature and photography. Annoyingly, I found it much easier to find males who wanted to smash than figure out who the women who were into women were, and negotiate doing something about it.

I joined the Bradford College LGBT group the first week I was there. And in the process, began to find out how much some lesbians despise bisexuals.

At the very first meeting I attended, Mel, the lesbian in charge, said she wanted to change the name of the group to BAGL—Bradford Association of Gays and Lesbians—because she liked bagels.

“But what about bisexuals?” another member asked.

“They don’t really belong here anyway,” Mel announced. “They aren’t really gay.”

(In an amusing aside, a year later Mel started dating a guy. The guy was rumored to have the biggest 🍆 on campus—I’ve always felt that added a profound irony to the situation. When asked if Mel was now a gasp bisexual, she said, “No! I’m a bisexual lesbian!” Basically, she hated bisexuals so much that even when she was getting’ a good deep dickin’, she didn’t want to associate with us. It’s really telling.)

Me & my bisexual roommate freshman year of college, in front of our dorm room. We were VERY OUT on campus 🤣

Besides that incident, there was this: I was eagerly looking in the Women-Seeking-Women section of the classifieds ads in local papers. Which is how I found something that has never left me: at the end of a sapphic ad, there would be the final line: “No drugs, no head games, no bis.”

Fan-fucking-tastic. I was rated in with drugs and mind games. I had expected the queer community to welcome me with open arms, and instead, I was clearly being told I was not welcome.

But this was the ‘90s. Lesbians had consolidated into “womyns-only” bubbles, and bis and trans-women were very much not invited. Bis were seen as “disease-carriers” who brought HIV and other STIs into the lesbian community (because apparently women are so pure and rose-scented that they cannot pass STIs to each other, even when eschewing safer sex precautions altogether…) Bis brought drama into community which would definitely would never have had drama without them cough choke by getting poor innocent lesbians to fall in love with them, and then up and leave those poor lesbians for a man.

I made it all the harder for myself by being hardcore goth at this point. At this point in time, the lesbians who went to Lilith Fair or went on women-only cruises all dressed the same. It was a type of soft-butch: short hair, chinos, plaid shirts. Minimal or no makeup! Someone who was dressed in all black, with heavy eyeliner and black lipstick, wearing fetish fabrics and velvet skirts was definitely not someone to be trusted or welcomed.

I threw myself against the lesbian community like against a brick wall for years. Eventually I figured out that a high percentage of my fellow goth girls were bi+, and anyone who dressed outside the mainstream was a potential partner. Lesbians didn’t want me, and I didn’t have particularly much to talk about with them.

Now many of these problems were mitigated by me finding Michelle my senior year of college and being handfasted with her for the next eight years. But Michelle and I were poly (and thus looking to date others). We longed to be in queer women’s spaces, so we dealt with the prejudice against us together.

Our handfasting. Yes, we were very geeky gals 🤓🤓

Spilling the 🫖: Astryiah’s physical description is based on the first gal at college I got to fool around with: Belle. She was perfect in every way, one of the most gorgeous women I’ve had the pleasure of being intimate with. She wasn’t really sure if she was bi, but she was willing to give it a try with me, and I will be eternally honored. I’ve lost touch with her. I wonder where she is now—and who she is with now…

Happy Pride to all of my dear Alphabet Soup Community. I welcome and cherish you no matter what letters describe you or what colors grace your flag!

OK, I’m out of reader questions now! Hit reply to this email and tell me what to write about next in the RavenLife segment!

See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

To celebrate World Dracula Day 2026 a series of interview segments will be posted to YouTube starting today and running for the next seven Tuesdays. The interview was recorded after Amber and I finished recording Blood Eternal in the studio, and covers such topics as Amber’s favorite character in the series, her favorite scene to narrate, how she relates to Noosh’s journey, and that one sex scene that got her spontaneously singing in the studio. (I talk, too, but we all know that’s of secondary interest at best… 😉)

Amber’s thoughts on the series are fascinating and we also laugh a lot about silly behind-the-scenes stuff, and I am really excited about sharing these. The videos will go live at noon each Tuesday through the first week of July. Shorter clips will be posted to IG/Threads/FB, but the full gloriousness of Amber’s and my discussion is only up on YouTube. So follow me there and turn the settings to let you know when my videos go live, so you don’t miss any.

For IndieLife this week, let me talk a bit about making videos...

Because my fame as an author has not hit the point where I can pay others to do this, so I make all these videos myself.

I try to do the most professional job I can with this, and so that means I have learned a lot of esoterism and the arcane arts (sometimes outright thaumaturgy!) of Adobe Premiere Pro.

I have bitched here before about Adobe InDesign. (And I will do so again! It’s a horrible monstrosity of a program!) And I am glad to say that Premiere Pro is more intuitive (although it would be honestly difficult to be less intuitive than InDesign!) But there is a lot of learning you need to do to make best use of the program, and unlike Photoshop, I’ve never had formal classes in it. And, of course, everything I do is always on a “you have a billion other vital things you need to be doing right now, so this must take the least amount of time from those” deadline. This means that all of my video editing has been learned by dropping the clips into Premiere, trying to figure it out myself, failing, looking up a tutorial online, watching enough to sort it out, doing that, and then rinse-and-repeat for the rest of the video.

It would be tedious as fuck to recount all the stuff I’ve had to figure out and then implement on the go for my marketing and promotional videos…but that’s actually the point I’m making. Being an indie author means learning a whole lot of shit that might not be in your natural wheelhouse, and almost always under time-pressure. So when you see marketing from indie authors, take a moment to appreciate the work they put into it. They have not paid someone to make that graphic or video. They have taught themselves how to do it, tried to create stuff at a standard that rivals the paid professionals, and put it out into the world with a quiet desperation that it will move the dial on sales. You should respect that as much as you respect the books they write.

Blood Eternal | Audible.com

The highly anticipated third installment of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series, with Amber Benson returning to bring the story to life as only she can. Get 3 months Audible membership for only $6.95 a month!

www.audible.com/pd/Blood-Eternal-Audiobook/B0GKHPHZQC

More exciting news: Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas has finally got its real cover and is available in both ebook and for the first time, paperback!

Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas: A Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series Holiday Story

He just wanted to taste love again. Now he’s in bondage to an unknown adversary, being tortured by Christmas carols…

www.amazon.com/dp/1960942182

If you didn’t grab your copy over the holidays, well, Xmas in May seems like a good idea!

I will be at Hellmouth again this year!

Amber and I will be talking about the making of Blood Eternal, and sharing some treats with the audience. (And those treats will include some free copies of the paperback of Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas!) I love this convention so much. If you can be there, you should be! It’s June 13-14 in Torrence, CA.

Join HellmouthCon 2026 at the filming location of Sunnydale High in Torrance, California. Guests, panels, fan programming, vendors, and immersive Buffy & Angel experiences. Plan your visit now.

Join HellmouthCon 2026 at the filming location of Sunnydale High in Torrance, California. Guests, panels, fan programming, vendors, and immersive Buffy & Angel experiences. Plan your visit now.

FandomCharities

Today’s RavenLife is a question from Patrick Califia, who is interested in women who write about M-M spice ♂️♂️🌶️

Since my am’r are bi+ (a term I love so much more than “pan”!) it gives me the opportunity to explore passion between all combinations of genders, which is a “perfect world” scenario for me 🎉

As for my own sexuality and what my attraction to all genders means, I like to think of myself as “purely queer.” When I am with a woman, no one questions the queerness of that. When I’m with a guy, the world perceives me as suddenly het. Nobody asks how I feel about it, but the answer is: I really feel like a gay man, when I am with a man. I might not have all the required equipment (not that I couldn’t strap it on!) but I really identify with gay male sexuality in a way I just don’t with actual heterosexuality. When I suck a dick, I have more in common with a twink in a bathhouse than a wifey behind a white picket fence. (Which I think means I’m probably better at it! 😉)

I think if having the option of being non-binary had been around when I was a kid, I would have grabbed it with both hands and never let go. When I was a little kid, I was a complete tomboy. I refused to wear pink and demanded to wear brown or blue. In nursery school, I rang a gang of boys I called “The Jaguars.” I had formed this gang, and I was the only girl allowed in it.

I made brown cool before steampunk did! 😉

In fact, one of my earliest memories is being at the top of the jungle gym, and my gang members were climbing up behind me. I found them somewhat annoying, so I said, “Go off and catch a girl.”

They ran off, happy to do this task that was very much in their wheelhouse, and I was in glorious solitude. Eventually they returned, dragging a little girl by limbs and pigtails. She was protesting in a vigorous high pitch. I knew this would bring a teacher over, and I didn’t want that.

“OK, I guess you can let her go,” I told them. She ran off, and they started climbing back up the jungle gym, and I realized I was back where I started. That frustration with how the world works is my main part of the memory.

(I was such a little egoist as a small child. At that point, I didn’t want to be a girl, and I didn’t think very highly of boys, so if asked my gender, I would have said, “Something better than either of those!”)

Even as I headed into my teens, doing femininity has always felt performative. Not in a bad way, I just came to it with the same attitude as doing drag (and I’ve done male drag as well—with delight!) I loved make-up because it was art, and because it let me control how I presented myself to the world. But in college I regularly wore men’s clothing and felt perfectly comfortable in it, having idolized Marlene Dietrich and seeing the combination of menswear and make-up as a way to signal my bisexuality to the world.

Me as Annie Lennox for Halloween, probably 2001

It never occurred to me along the way that being bisexual didn’t have something to do with my own gender. I’m sure there are plenty of bi+ people out there who are happily a single gender, and nothing wrong with that. But for me, loving all the genders meant that I had all the genders inside me: I contained multitudes and could love multitudes.

So going back to the original question: I have absolutely no trouble writing queer male sex scenes because I have a man who loves men inside me. You may not see “Chaz” (the name I picked when I was exploring male drag) on the daily, but he is here, he is queer, and he is ready to tell you all about what he’d love to do to that guy over there! (If I’d had the spoons to perform as a Drag King, my full drag name would have been Chaz Ties and I would have be the most adorable little leather daddy you ever did see!)

I was able to explore that part of myself so fully because I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years after graduating college. My then-wife Michelle and I drove as fast as we could across the country, to the magical land of rainbow flags and queer people holding hands openly as they walked around the Castro.

And the reason I knew to “fly home,” as it were, was actually the person who started this whole topic up. Patrick Califia is one of the biggest names in queer erotic and other writing, and I had gotten my hands on Macho Sluts and his other gorgeous works in college, and those words in those books one billion percent changed my life.

Macho Sluts showed me a world I wanted to go live in immediately. Patrick’s books affected my life more directly than Samuel Delany and Robert Heinlein (who made me realize that I could and should be a writer) because it took me years of fucking around with essays and articles and short stories and stuff before I ever wrote my first novel, but basically, from the moment of opening the cover of Macho Sluts, my life was set in the direction of living the queerest life in SF that I could. It didn’t matter that I had a chronic illness, no job prospects, and a huge college debt. I just packed up the car after graduation and went. When we first got together, I quoted David Bowie to Michelle: “I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise I won’t bore you.” Implicit in that was moving to San Francisco for the queerest life possible.

Michelle and me in our girlfriend’s loft bed in a very dubious “apartment” in SF. We are smiling because we have achieved the queerest life possible 🏳️‍🌈

The other gift from Patrick was the absolute confidence that I could write gay male sex scenes. When I first read his works, Patrick was “Pat,” and my ideal of what being a lesbian was. Since he didn’t come out as trans until years later, what I experienced was a lesbian writing about queer male desire. The story “The Spoiler” made a big impression, but then, all his stories made a huge impression—I should honestly be paying Patrick royalties because the concepts in his “The Vampire” shaped my ideas of the am’r/am’r-nafsh relationship, which is core to how the am’r work as a species.

I like to pretend that I’m totally chill with the fact that Patrick is now my friend, and I try not to bother him with my hero-worship of him as a writer, but the fact of the matter is that there is still a 20-year-old Raven inside me bouncing up and down and squeeing whenever I interact with him. I have been so lucky that meeting my heroes has never let me down: Patrick Califia and Samuel Delany and Jim Caroll were all a true pleasure to meet and interact with.

This has gone a bit longer than I meant it to, but that simple question was in no way simple! I still could write pages and pages more about all of this! But to wrap it up: I have no trouble wrapping my head around male-male desire because I feel I understand it within my own body and soul. And you all should go read Patrick Califia’s writing and have your own lives changed by it.

See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Last week IIP sent out the press release with the exciting news that voice actors Carmen Seantel and Hel will be doing a duet narration of (many of) your favorite book in the series: That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

Here’s the official press release:

Raven Belasco’s That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story Performed In Duet Narration For Audiobook - IssueWire

Raven Belasco’s That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story Performed In Duet Narration For Audiobook - IssueWire

Issuewire • Immoral Influence Publications

IndieLife: let’s talk about press releases…

Since IIP is still such a small company, I am still doing things that I can’t wait to someday farm out to people who have gotten degrees (or at least a lot of practice) in how to do them.

Press releases are one of those things. My degree in Comparative Literature basically trained me in how to look at what the parameters of the writing assignment is, quickly study up on how to do them, and then, with some sweat and occasionally tears, write something that fits that style and has the required content. (This may not be precisely what the professors were trying to teach me, but it got me graduated cum laude, so… 🤷‍♀️)

Press Releases are what I consider technical writing. You have a word count and precise layout, you have information you must get across to the reader in the most optimal way for them to intake it, and you have a tone you have to hit. It’s no different than a white paper or a manual. (Both things I have been paid to edit, btw, so I know!)

If you are intent on doing that #indielife, you will be writing your own press releases (unless you have a particularly awesome friend) so a search on “how to write a press release” and some concentrate learning is in your future. My suggestion is to look at other author’s press releases and then shamelessly steal the layout and style.

It’s some of the least fun writing you’ll ever do…but somebody has to do it! Until, and I personally as an author and human being cannot wait for this, you can pay someone else to do it! 🫰🫰🫰

 Anyway, now that I come to think of it, I honestly don’t know what your favorite story in the series is! So please tell me!

RavenLife: How I got into photography

(This RavenLife was set in motion by Andrija Popovic. Thank you so much for asking, Andrija! If you want to suggest a future RavenLife section, just hit reply to this newsletter and tell me what you want!)

Growing up, I knew I was an artist. I had these pictures in my head that I wanted to bring out into the world. I took drawing classes, painting classes, pottery classes, you name it. I spent my childhood trying pencils, oils, watercolors, crayons, everything—but I never felt like I’d found my medium, my way of expressing myself.

When I was in freshman year, I was dating a sophomore named Kevin. Kevin was doing photography. Since I was dating him, I was obviously a free model. I was a competitive ice skater at the time, so Kevin asked if he could tag along to the rink. I said yes, and he got me stretching, doing my warm-up, and then running through my competitive routine.

Some nice images came out of this, but so much more important, I asked myself: “Why haven’t I tried photography?!”

It was too late for that semester, so I stole my mother’s Konica Autoreflex TC 35mm SLR and basically taught myself a lot of what NOT to do over the summer. I also got some great shots because it turns out that photography was MY medium, and even with no knowledge of how a camera works (beyond what the tiny Konica manual taught me) I was able to start realizing my artistic vision in a way that felt more “this is it!” than a pencil or paintbrush ever did.

The next September I was enrolled in photography class, and ended up having a Photography Major in high school. I adored the teacher, Mr. David Prifti, beyond words. He was the perfect combination of teaching vital technical skills and at the same time challenging your artistic self. I remember him looking at one project I turned in and saying, with evident approval in his voice, “You’re a real weirdo, Raven!”

Me being me, I immediately set out to “shock the school” with the most scandalous images I was allowed to make. (Pushing up against limits being a core part of my personality, which I’m sure comes as no surprise!) They would not allow me to do nudes, which I fumed about, feeling very censored and held down.

My very first self-portrait. I wasn’t an over-dramatic proto-goth or anything…

Prifti (all of his more serious students just called him that) started something I kept up for a long time: an annual self-portrait. Back when I was working with film, this was not the same thing as selfies are today. I at one point hung the camera from a tall pole and posed directly beneath it! But mostly, I figured out that I could use another person as a living selfie-stick by posing where I would be so that I could get focus and composition right, then trading spots with me and hitting the shutter for me. I did an annual self-portrait until I got a mobile phone, and now there’s selfies all the time. Less artistic ones, though. But I do have my own visual exploration of myself for each year before I got a mobile.

When I tell people I’m a photographer, they say, “What kind?” I hate that question! I started photography wandering around taking pictures of whatever I wanted to take pictures of: people, still lives, nature, event photography, political statements, all the things. The right image of anything is art, and I have absolutely zero intent to be boxed in to just one subject. I am a photographer of all the things I want to photograph, that’s what kind of photographer I am 💪

Shooting nature in the UK, 2016

Sadly, being a writer has pulled me away from being the semi-pro photographer that I was for years. I can’t put in the time on both building my career as a writer AND as a photographer, since both a very time-consuming if you’re not just doing them as a hobby. But I do a lot of my own product shots, and obviously all the promotional selfie stuff, so my photographer side is not totally abandoned 📸

My best photography story is when a friend and I snuck into the chapel on our college campus, and she climbed up on the alter and put the gaudily bejeweled cross between her befishnetted legs. I was doing long-exposure, multi-flash photography that night, and so I had to set up my camera on a tripod, with the shutter on “B” and held open with a rubber band, and then run around hitting my flash in various areas around the shot—and get it all done before the campus police found us! 👀

“Multi-Flash Sacrilege” 1996, Bradford College Chapel

No, wait, there’s a better story! In my first year of college, I was very excited that I could now work with nudes (this had been frowned upon in high school, for some reason) and apparently my enthusiasm was a bit intense for some. “Don’t let Raven approach you—she’ll ask you to pose nude!” became what was being said behind my back on campus. The upshot of that was that anyone who didn’t run away from me was the kind of person who was willing to do nudes 😁

“Classic Nude Pile-up” 1996, Bradford College Theatre

After transferring to U/Mass from the teeny Bradford College, I didn’t have the option of a Photography Major anymore, so I just did my own shoots and used the rentable school darkroom, lugging my own trays and stuff around with me. Eventually I made the switch to digital photography (although always missing the real darkroom and hoping for my very own someday), learning and loving Photoshop to point of attending annual “Photoshop for photographers” conventions 🤓, shooting three weddings, one pregnancy, and myriad fetish events around the world. I’ve had two shows, both in local coffeeshops—I love the idea of bringing art out into the world for people to interact with it while going about daily life. I would love to have my work in hospitals and other places it could bring comfort through art.

“Man of the Mind” 2026 (part of an ongoing project)

OK, I’ve got a novel to get back to writing! ✒️ See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

INDIELIFE: Finally ☑️ An Item Off That Indie Author Endless To Do 📋

As part of the Blood Eternal audiobook release, I’ve been getting reviews coming in. While chatting with one of the reviewers, he pointed out that it would be good to have the Glossary of the Am’r Language and Index of Non-English Phrases (that are in the end of the paperback and ebook versions of all the series books) uploaded to Audible.
This is something I’ve been intending to get around to for literally years, but it has just never has moved up the Indie Author Endless To Do List high enough to actually materialize 🙄

So I wrote back to the lovely fellow, thanked him for applying a boot to my ass in this regard, and now if you buy the novels on audiobook, those downloads finally come with them. (It should also work for you if you bought them before—but if you have any issues, hit reply to this email and I’ll shoot you over the PDF directly!)
Here is the review of Blood Eternal:

🎧 Listen to Blood Eternal at Audible 🎧

🎧 Listen to Blood Eternal at Amazon 🎧

🎧 Listen to Blood Eternal at Apple 🎧

RAVENLIFE: When Shit Gets Real, But You’re Not Fictional…

So far, I’ve written about stuff from my past. Today, thanks to a chest-thumpin’ idiot, you get brought into “a day in the life of Raven” as of last weekend. 🍿
For those of you who are new here, recently I’ve had to move in with my mom, as she is dealing with age-related memory loss. I haven’t been writing about it much— it would scare all of you off if I really went in-depth on how hard this is—but I am at the moment not living with my partner, Trent, and we are grabbing time together when we can get it.
Trent had come out to do a special weekend hike with Archie and me.
As we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a man. We didn’t see the off-leash dog he was letting just wander around the parking area until after Trent had almost hit it, due to neither seeing nor expecting a dog to be there. It’s understood that you don’t have dogs off-leash in the parking areas around here. (It’s also basic common sense, but common sense is not as common as one would prefer.)
As we exit the car, both upset about that close call, the man yells to Trent, “Whatcha doin’, TRYIN’ to hit my dog?”
This was not the correct thing to say, to either of us. Trent responded, “What are you trying to do? Get your dog hit by letting it run around the parking lot off-leash?”
“Oh, Big Man are you? That’s fighting words! You wanna fight?”
“Sure.” For those of you who don’t know Trent, he is my main resource for choreographing the fight scenes in my books. He is practiced in a number of martial arts traditions, and has never not been in-training since he was a little kid. Trent is not looking to start a fight. He is, however, perfectly happy to finish one, as a salutary lesson: “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”

Trent showing me some moves for That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story fight scenes

I at this point have Archie tucked under one arm, and have moved to a safe distance to give them room if they are going to get into it. I have my phone out, because Trent, being Black, will likely need evidence that he didn’t start the fight and did not use unreasonable force during it.
Trent meanwhile, has already prepared himself for the fight. He’s assessed the guy, guessed at what he will do for an opening move, come up with a plan of response, and decided the exact level of pain he’s going to put the guy through for being a loud-mouth bonehead who endangers his own dog. He is just waiting for the guy to take the first swing, because he is Black and the guy is white, and he needs to be able to tell the cops that he did not start the fight.
But the guy doesn’t want to fight. He just felt he had to be, as he put it, a Big Man, but he doesn’t really actually want to exchange blows. Every time Trent relaxes out of stance and starts to move away, the guy goes, “That’s right, walk away, you know you can’t take me on!” and so Trent obliges by getting back into a fighting stance and saying, “I’m not moving away. Come here and fight.”
Now, I’m on day three of a migraine and the meds are barely touching it, and I just want to get on with walking my dog and my partner in the woods. I’m getting tired of this nonsense. So, Archie still tucked like a football under my left arm, I walk over to the guy, hold out my right hand, and say, “Give me the leash. I’ll hold your dog so you can go fight.”
The guy’s eyes got wide. He was not expecting this, especially not of a “girl,” who should at this point either be having hysterics or begging her partner, “Don’t do it, baby!” But while Trent was assessing his opponent, so was I. This guy was no threat to Trent. He was profoundly unlikely to get even one strike landed. And Trent was not so amped-up that he was going to lose control and hurt this chucklehead too much. This was a “safe” fight for Trent, and while the guy would be injured a bit, it was a “safe” fight for him, too. I was just tired of the whole situation and wanted it over, one way or another.
As I made this offer, Trent got back into fighting stance. “So he thinks he’s a ninja?” the jackass asks me. “Yes, he’s trained in martial arts,” I reply. “Hand me the leash so you can fight now.”
But the dolt is clutching his leash. He really doesn’t want to fight now. Trent said that I probably scared the guy more than he did, at this point, because I was “calm and a bit condescending,” as he put it.
The craven imbecile was clearly not going to do anything, so I went back to Trent, put Archie down, and we started to get back to our rudely interrupted walk. “Oh, yeah, walk away!” the blockhead yells after us.
I’d had it. I turn around, look him dead in the eye, and say, “You’re an idiot. And you lost.” He stares at me, stunned into silence. I turn my back. Trent and Archie and I walk away.
We saw him two more times on the walk, and he hid behind a tree each time, in that nonchalant, “I just happened to step behind a tree right at this very minute, it had nothing to do with seeing you,” kind of way.
Trent informed me, grinning, that I’d just done “epic girlfriend shit.” Which is hilarious, because if I tried to be “epic” I’d have failed humiliatingly. I just had a headache and enough of that guy’s toxic masculinity.
Which, I realize, is in it’s own way what Noosh does to survive the am’r. Except I don’t get the timely quips. Instead of what I said, Noosh would have turned around and shot off: “Fight or shut the fuck up. And your dog deserves a better human.”

Proud of both of my guys!

But I’m not a quick-witted fictional character. I’m just a tired gal with a headache and no more fucks to give. The real winner of this whole story—besides my partner Trent, who will always stand up to a bully—is Archie, who stayed calmly under my arm the whole time (despite the fact that I know for certain that he senses all emotions around him strongly) and who just trotted off with us without any reactivity after it was over. My Archie-boy is definitely a fictional character come to life! 💝

OK, I’ve got a novel to get back to writing! ✒️ See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

I was going to put off the newsletter another week, but then it would throw off my usual schedule, so I decided, you know what, fuck it! Let’s just have the newsletter this week, despite the extra one last week! Go crazy like that!

And I do have a funny story to tell you. And it just happens to fit in the new section…

INDIELIFE: Who’s the bitch who got featured? 😁

Just as I was starting to pull together the Blood Eternal marketing stuff, I saw a note from Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, offering authors a chance to submit a piece for their new segment, “Behind the Story.” So one afternoon, when I had an awkward period of time between my mom’s appointments, I bashed one out, polished it up, and sent it over.

And then I didn’t hear back. Not even a confirmation of receipt. Ah well, I thought, I can find a way to recycle it. Such is the life of an indie author. We write stuff that gets rejected all the time, and eventually (and often unexpectedly) find a good place for it.

And then the next issue of the Booklife Report comes out. In the header it says, “A Vampire Series Evolves.”

“Godammit,” I mutter to myself, “Who’s this bitch author who got featured when I never even got a confirmation of having received my piece?!”

And I open the email…and they actually had run the piece I’d written and hadn’t bothered to let me know it was accepted and running in the next edition 😂

I’m still chucking about that. Who’s the bitch who got featured? Me, I’m the bitch who got featured 🦚

Go read the full thing HERE

And now, poll time! You know you wanna…

Don’t forget to go grab your copy of the Blood Eternal audiobook, which is available on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books:

Where in the world is Caaisho?

I am indeed cranking along as best I can with Blood Depths. Caaisho has left Trinidad now—in less-than-willing company with our favorite Trinidadian pirate—and is now half-way across the Atlantic. I’m so excited about Caaisho’s part of the story. And Noosh’s. This is going to be such a good book!

RAVENLIFE: Ironical beginnings…

So, since I’m now feeling really free to talk about my life with a chronic illness (and thank you all again for wanting to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly—it means so much to me!) so I wanted to start in with an early story about becoming chronically ill.

At first, no one knew what was wrong with me. Almost one had heard of CFS, and the formal title of Myalgic encephalomyelitis was a decade off. When I first got sick, there was actually some senator somewhere in the middle of the country who was trying to put into law that CFS was hypochondria, not a “real illness.” My father informed me that I was “afraid of life,” and so I was staying in bed pretending to be sick so I wouldn’t have to face my fears. (I didn’t bother to tell him that since I was 17, all I wanted was to be out of bed—and out of the house!—and going on dubious and unwise adventures and living life to its teenage fullest.)

Being 17, I didn’t want to have some stupid, boring illness. And I certainly didn’t want anyone to know I had some stupid, boring illness. I’d been getting so many blood tests that I had track marks on the insides of my elbows, so I started wearing short-sleeve shirts to school and walking around with my arms twisted slightly outwards, in hopes that people would think I was a junkie, because that seemed “cooler” than having some stupid illness.

Eventually they ran out of blood tests. The last one was for Epstein-Barr Virus, which is one of the viruses that can set off ME/CFS (like COVID can end up as Long Covid). The doctor actually said to me, “Let’s hope it’s not this, because there is no cure for it…”

Ding! Ding! Ding! I won the door prize! A lifetime of uncurable illness! Woohoo! 🏆

You can imagine, since I thought being a junkie was more acceptable than being chronically ill, that I did not tell anyone about my diagnosis. I just showed up to school twice a week for half-days (when I could do even that) and tried to be as mysterious as I could be. “No illness here! I’m just inexplicably absent a lot. I’m skipping class! Yes! I’m a juvenile delinquent! Or becoming a vampire…! Something cool!” 😎

Meanwhile I did my schoolwork from bed, and my grades turned to straight ‘A’s—it turns out that I was both distracted by being in class and bad at tests, but if you gave me the books and left me alone I could basically teach myself. (I needed a math tutor, but that was it.) And since I was too sick to walk to the library, and I’d already read everything in the fantasy section of the home library, I hit the science fiction section and fell head-over-heels in love with Robert Heinlein and Samuel Delany and the genre in general. Indeed, I had always planned to write a science fiction novel, not a vampire novel at all! 🙄

Here I am about age 17 on a boat. How thematic and everything! You can see how sick I am, though… And really not sure about that scarf…

The amusing conclusion to this story comes from when I went to my five year high school reunion—to do what I called a “victory lap,” since I had moved to San Francisco, was at that point married to a woman, and felt like I was far, far cooler than the people who had bullied me in middle school.

I went to check in as I entered the high school cafeteria, and the gal looked up at me and said, ‘Oh! Raven! Hi! You’re the one who was chronically ill, right?”

So, despite all my best efforts to come off as a juvenilely delinquent junkie (which since I knew there was a rumor that I’d slept with every guy in the school*, seemed like a do-able rumor goal), somehow people had known all along about my damn illness. The thought that I’d hadn’t gotten away with being anything but sick shook me.

(*at the time I was having trouble getting a boyfriend, so the irony of that rumor was truly not appreciated. I felt that if I was going to be called a “slut,” I should at least have the enjoyable sexual experiences to go along with it.)

But I only stumbled for a second. Soon I was sauntering around the cafeteria telling everyone about my glorious life in sin-tastic San Francisco. In the end, the illness hasn’t kept me from achieving the “coolness” I longed for at age 17. I wish I could go back and tell that poor sick girl it was going to turn out OK, at least in that regard.

It’s been a few emails since I expressed my appreciation for you all. Thank you for staying subscribed, staying engaged, and staying supportive of my author journey. It’s because of YOU that I am able to keep bringing you the stories of the am’r. You are the bestest and I routinely brag that my readers are the finest readers any author could hope for 💝

OK, I’m going to now leave you alone for the usual period of time—and I really mean it this time! 😂 See you in two weeks…and as always, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

You’re getting this newsletter a week early because today is PRESS RELEASE DAY for the Blood Eternal audiobook and I didn’t want you all to have to wait a week with this exciting news

Here’s the official press release

And here it is in pretty picture form, if you prefer:

Click here to see all the carousel

👉 Here’s the link to pre-order it on Audible! 👈

And this takes us directly into our new featured section:

Indielife: Why have you released it only to Audible???

Those of you who don’t use Audible/Amazon for audiobooks will notice that we didn’t do the release “wide,” but exclusively to Audible.

While we are only doing this for the first three months, there are very good (for some value of “good” 🙄) reasons to do so.

If you release your books as “Audible Exclusive,” you get paid out 70% of royalties. If you publish your audiobook “wide” (to all platforms) then Audible pays you a mere 35% of royalties. Now, you might think, “Well, the income from the other platforms will make up for that.” That’s what I thought, when I decided to go wide for the first three audiobooks I made…

However. It doesn’t work out that way in real life. The combined income from Libro.FM, Chirp, Overdrive/Libby works out to less than $30 twice annually, which just doesn’t come near to the income that Audible/Amazon yields.

So now we hit the ethical quandary place. My whole soul wants my audiobooks to be available in libraries, and through Libro, who supports indie bookstores. And in general I am anti-monopoly. So that’s what I want to do.

But if I do that, I don’t make enough money to pay off my investment in making good audiobooks. Making audiobooks isn’t cheap, and I have taken the most expensive path because I’m an audiobook person and I couldn’t make an audiobook I wouldn’t enjoy listening to. (And that has led to getting to work with Amber Fuckin’ Benson, which make it one of the best decisions of my life, as she has brought Noosh to life better than anyone else could.)

So, having started by going the ethical route, and paying the price for it, my publisher and I have decided to walk the “middle path” this time. We are going to start Blood Eternal out as an Audible Exclusive, and make the best royalties from the early sales burst.

Once that plateaus—as it sadly inevitably will—we will take Blood Eternal wide (and make a big fuss about it, so that people who have been waiting can ask their libraries to get it through Libby). My income will drop precipitously…but my soul will be happier about things 💖

And this is the thing about being an indie author. (Or, like me, someone who works with a small publisher who is willing to work with you about business decisions.) If you are an author with a bigger publisher, you have made the decision when you signed the contract that you are aligned with their ethics, and then you don’t have to think about it further. But for me, I am having to wrestle with ethics for every decision no matter how big or small. And that is really exhausting and frustrating—no matter what, you feel like you have chosen wrong every time.

So by going this middle road—start exclusive, then go wide—I am hoping that for once I will feel like I made the right choice as both a business woman and a person who holds her ethics strongly 🛣️

If you don’t fancy the idea of having to play this game with your livelihood, I strongly suggest you keep submitting your manuscript to agents and publishers and try to get trad pubbed. Indielife is all about these kinds of tough choices and frustrating outcomes.

Anyway, here’s me having a cupcake to celebrate!

No Ravenlife Segment today

I’m skipping the Ravenlife section today because I want to spend that time on working on Chapter 7 in Blood Depths, and I don’t think any of you will argue with that decision. But I do have a lot of plans for future features and honestly kinda excited about this new part of the newsletter—so thank you all for requesting it!

I’ll be back in two weeks with a more usual newsletter. In the meantime, if you are not an Audible user, feel free to email me if you want to be put on a list to be the first to know when Blood Eternal goes wide…

OK, I’m gonna go write! You go read the press release and/or pre-order Blood Eternal at Audible (if you use that platform) and then go be good or be good at it! 😘

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Hey Fabulous Readers! 💖

The poll in the last newsletter was instructive: those of you who responded said that you wanted to know more about being an indie author, and more personal stuff about me. So I shall pay attention to your desires and restructure things a bit, going. I will start newsletters with the indie author section, and put the personal section beneath it, so you can easily get to what you want to read 😊

And hey, here’s a NEW poll!

INDIELIFE: I hate all of this…But new covers coming!

So the last six or so years have taught me that my books sell best at events/conventions/goth markets—basically, anywhere I can talk to the customers about the books. I have had exhausting but exhilarating days where I sold a book to almost everyone who walked past. So I know that the series can build an audience who is enthusiastic and excited for more. (This would be YOU. And thank you for that!)

However, Amazon sales have always been dismal, and continue that way. And as much as I hate-hate-HATE it, I cannot make it as a writer without the biggest bookseller on the planet.

I tried getting help two years ago with an Amazon marketing company. That was a serious waste of my time and money, and taught me a very real lesson that selling sprockets (or self-sealing stem-bolts) on Amazon is completely different than selling books. (Also, that company was very unprofessional and it was a deeply unpleasant experience.)

Last year I worked with an agency which was much better to deal with, who focused on helping authors who wanted to run Amazon ads. After six months, they had not moved the needle, and after kindly giving me money back, they shrugged and said, “Some books just don’t sell well on Amazon”

That was frustrating, because my books are a good, quality product, with covers that people adore, and there has to be a way to get Amazon readers to give them a try. I have redone the book descriptions, gone through every few months and updated the categories—this is a terribly important thing that no one tells you about, and Amazon keeps changing the categories and will actually penalize you if you choose the wrong ones. I have jumped through the flaming hoops to make A+ content (which I was assured would entirely change the situation. Spoiler alert: it did not.)

Two weeks ago, I finally found another company who helps authors with Amazon sales. And finally, I found people with knowledge of how Amazon works, and years of experience selling books there. (I wish I had found them years ago!)

After a somewhat brutal first meeting, I have learned that my beautiful and unique covers are not selling because they are not what people expect to see when they look for books in my genre. And I do not have their attention like I do people standing in front of my table at a vampire market—they are standing in line in the grocery store or watching TV, anything but give it their full attention. So my books at first impression need to look like something they want to buy.

Now I can hear you say, “But your books are cross-genre!” That is exactly what I said, too. It was explained to me that we are looking for the most “forgiving” genre readers. For example, science fiction readers will read a science fiction book with a mystery in it, but mystery readers won’t read a book with a space ship on the cover. While I am an omnivorous reader (and most of you are, too) that rings all-too-true for me.

So the new plan is to look at best selling dark fantasy books and see what their covers have in common, and get new covers for the series that look exactly like that.

It breaks my heart into tiny pieces, and goes against everything I believe as an artist—I want my works to stand out from the crowd, dammit! But I need to actually sell enough copies of my books to afford to keep writing them. So we are doing this (and more—stay tuned to this newsletter for those future items.)

For those of you who adore the Kwasi covers, do not fear. Now matter what else is done, I will keep selling the Kwasi covered versions in person, as they do very well in that context.

It has been a real kick in the stomach for me to hear all of that, and to know that I’ve been accidentally sabotaging my own sales by trying to offer something fresh and new (everyone always says the vampire genre is “dead”—so stop buying shit with the same damn covers already! ) but I do feel strongly this is the right direction for the series, at least in terms of increasing the readership. However, ugh, I still hate everything about it!

Where In The World…?

Now that I have made the announcement to you all about Caaisho, I can start tracking her movements through the novel along with Noosh.

This—um, infographic, I guess?—is slightly out of date, because I’ve just finished reworking Chapter Five, and Caaisho is a little further on her journey of meeting the am’r, but I really wanted to show where her story starts, so enjoy this hint, and there will be more in the next newsletter.

For those of you who have read Interview with the Vagabond King, you’ll remember that the infamous Boysie Singh is located in “Trinbago.” So could that mean that he makes a guest appearance in Blood Depths…? Oh, com’on, you know me! No way I could pass that opportunity up 😂

Anyway, if you haven’t read it, it’s still only .99¢ on Amazon. Although it doesn’t seem to sell well at that price point, so I’m thinking about raising it. Which means now is the best time to grab it, before is gets more expensive!

He went looking for a story. He found a terrifying and blood-soaked reality.

It’s 1960. Desmond Bangbourne has travelled to sunny Trinidad to write a story about the infamous pirate and gangster Boysie Singh, hanged three years earlier. After interviews with family and locals fail to turn up useful information, Desmond is given an address to visit…after dark. There he meets the person he was least expecting, and the story pulls him into a murderous and soul-shaking encounter with the am’r (the vampires’ name for themselves.)

a.co/d/02pPANC5

I’m still doing my “get to know your character by cooking the foods she grew up with” thing

And maaaaan, does it beat any other sorts of research 🤤

Instagram post

The above video is me making malai kismayo (Somali fried fish), curried cauliflower, and the delicious flatbread muufo. I cannot begin to express how delicious Somali foods are. All the recipes I’m making are from Soo Fariista / Come Sit Down: A Somali American Cookbook and if you cook, you need to get it.

Oh! In making the above reel, I discovered Somalian funk band Dur-Dur Band (who had an album called “Mogadisco” which I think may be the finest album name in all of time and space) so now I don’t just have new flavors for my mouth, but new ones for my ears as well 🎧

RAVENLIFE: You want in…❓

Since there are a bunch of new readers here, I should mention again that I have Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and I’ve had it since I was 17, which was, uh, a minute ago 😉

I had written a whole long thing about my life history of having that chronic illness, but it was super depressing and I’ve just deleted the whole thing…

There is no way to write about ME/CFS without it being tedious and miserable, because that’s what having a chronic illness is. I have the damn illness and I myself can’t stand reading other people writing about it, so I can only imagine how much non-chronically ill people don’t want to read a whole long thing about it 🙄

How do I let you all into my life more, however, and not explain it? It shapes every decision I make, every action I take (mostly actions I don’t get to take, that is) and how I plan both my life and writing career

When I post images to social media, it’s of me getting out and living life. But then I don’t post the images in the 1-3 days following, where I “pay for” my reckless expense of energy—or spoons, for those in the know 🥄🥄🥄

I actually took a picture of me crashed in bed the other day, to see if I could make it interesting. As you see, it is not particularly interesting…but this is as “real” as it gets!

Who wants to see pictures of me in bed feeling exhausted and in pain for three days running? Absolutely nobody. A chronic illness is not something useful for social media, the way recovering from a broken leg would be. With the latter, you can post pictures of the cast being put on, the cast coming off, inspirational pictures of you at physical therapy, and then eventually, a tearfully grateful post about how you are back to normal and what a journey it was.

I don’t get that. My illness looks the same every day. I can post the things I get done despite it, but after those triumphs are an unknown period of recovery for having inevitably pushed too hard, and we are back to me lying in bed, feeling miserable, hoping the “crash” won’t last too long. There is no feel-good story to attach to my invisible illness, and to tell the honest truth would scare most followers away—if only from sheer boredom 🙄

So there is a real temptation to only let you into the pretty, shiny parts of my life, but I would like to actually be honest and show the whole picture somehow…

Anyway, I will be working on how to give you the “full Raven experience” in the coming newsletters, because the fact is that I have learned a lot about managing a chronic illness since I was 17, and I have managed to have a rich life around it/despite it. And I have lots of stories to tell!

Until two weeks from now, know that you are cherished readers, and I hope in all your endeavours you follow the helpful guideline of “Be good or be good at it!” 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

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Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you read this newsletter, I’m in the hospital: knocked out and getting an endoscopy. So, ha, suckers! You are still experiencing 2026, and I, for a brief but glorious couple hours, am entirely not experiencing it 😉

Obviously not much writing is getting done today. But it has been a good couple weeks for Blood Depths. Caaisho is really letting me know her voice—meanwhile, I’m not putting her through the easiest time, so it’s very kind of her to be willing to work with me at all 😂😭

I’m sure I’ll be talking about this endlessly once the book comes out and I’m doing the promotion for it, but it’s on my mind now so I’ll just natter to you about it for a while: Caaisho is going to have a very different to introduction to the world of the am’r than Noosh did, and I think it’s very important.

Noosh had a very romantic (or at least intensely spicy) intro to the am’r, because Sandu/Vlad was feeling all nostalgic and finally ready to fall in love. But that cannot be the way all my protagonists discover the am’r underworld.

✔️ For one practical reason, my series isn’t romance. Yes, there are romantic sub-plots, but these books are the story of the personal growth of the protagonist—in a personal-growth-or-die kinda way—as opposed to the story of a relationship.

✔️ For a more fiction-centric reason, because vampires are monsters. And while there’s no lack of monster-fuckers amongst us kee 😉, I never want to get sparkly and forget that we are playing in the dark with violent mass murders. (I would add “inhuman,” but the am’r are really “more human than human,” at least in terms of flaws.)

It’s really important to me to balance carefully between the awareness and respect that since the Victorian era, vampires have been the “sex monster,” the alluring and seductive monster (who is the cause for the paranormal romance genre existing in the first place) but because before that time, vampires were the personification of death, death come back to walk amongst us—and those older vampires had no romance about them at all—they were pure horror.

So as more characters come into the series, some need to experience this side first. It can’t be all sexy strangers in evening wear seducing you to the dark side. And actually, the decision to go in the “vampire pirates” direction for the next book helped ensure my choice, because a pirate’s life is rough and violent and they have chosen a symbol of death as their own symbol: the Jolly Roger (although of course that was not the only pirate flag, but it’s the best known.)

“When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” Land-based vampires might not be forthcoming about being Death-in-a-tux, but seawater vampires are going to be a different breed, just like us kee landlubbers and sailors.

Still cooking my character to life

The latest Somali recipes I’ve cooked up were Mishkaki, which normally is done as meat-on-a-skewer, but since there were no skewers at my mom’s place, worked perfectly as meatballs—and which will be on very regular repeat in this kitchen going forward 🤤

And Bariis Iskukaris, a rice pilaf which was somehow even better than the Mishkaki, and which my mouth is watering for just looking at this picture

I wish I could put a plate through the computer for you, because it was that good, and I would love to share the experience with you 🍽️

I keep promising exciting news, but then delays and other annoying parts of publishing get in the way. So all that thrilling stuff is still just over the horizen, for now, but I can’t wait to fill this newsletter with excited announcements as soon as I can. For now, Blood Depths is sailing forward at a respectable amount of knots, and really, that’s the most important thing 🚤

Until two weeks from now, know that you are cherished readers, and I hope in all your endeavours you follow the guideline of “Be good or be good at it!” 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Before we start, I’ve been working on the backend of this newsletter to improve deliverability, as for some of you it’s been heading right into the ol’ spam filter. Please add rb@ravenbelas.co to your contacts, so you don’t miss any of the really exciting updates that are coming this month…

Hey Fabulous Readers! It feels like it’s been two months since the last newsletter, not two weeks 😂😭 But that aside, let’s get this rolling with an announcement! 📢

I have been considering pursuing graphic novel adaptations, and would love to speak with any professional comics artists who might be interested in discussing this project.

(I know what you are thinking, but sadly Kwasi is too busy already with other projects to take this on 😭)

So if you know any comic artists who would love to take on a dynamic vampire story with violence and history (and I have ideas on what to do with the spicy bits to make them compelling but not graphic), please pass along my info to them or theirs to me. Just hit reply to this email or send to rb at ravenbelas dot co

(This would seem like a crazy way to find people, but when I wrote about not being able to get the legal permissions to use “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in my story “Finding Bela Lugosi,” it turned out that a wonderful reader of this newsletter was working in that industry and helped me make it happen. And I know that many of you who read this are fantastically talented in your own rights and have extremely cool friends, so from that perspective, it’s just the right place to start 😎)

Research with your tastebuds 👅

As you may recall from the last newsletter, the new character of Caaisho was announced, with some gorgeous art by Kwasi. Caaisho is a Somali-American woman who is about the come head-to-head with the am’r—and neither she nor the world of the am’r will ever be the same again…

(For those of you who might be worrying, never fear, Noosh is not going anywhere! Well, she’s continuing on the journey you last saw her embarking upon, in the story “Teeth Are Bones” in Blood Triad, but you will absolutely be seeing her )

Blood Triad: Stories in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series

Available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook, Blood Triad is a must-read for fans of vampire fiction and historical fantasy, especially those who value meticulously researched narratives that deliver immersive world-building, nuanced character dynamics and diverse perspectives, and thought-provoking explorations of love and resilience.

www.amazon.com/Blood-Triad-Stories-Ancient-Scrolls/dp/1960942069

Obviously, for Caaisho, I need to do my homework and do it well, giving the character’s backstory the respect it deserves, and I have indeed done a lot of reading over the past many months…

Instagram post

One fun part of the research is that I’m cooking dishes that Caaisho would have grown up thinking as the “taste of home.” I was excited to find Soo Fariista / Come Sit Down by Wariyaa: Somali Youth in Museums — high school students who explore cultural preservation and history through food.

During the nor’easter last Monday, I made my first dishes from the cookbook:

Digaag duban (spicy baked chicken) & Maraq baamiye (okra stew)

And canjeelo, a pancake-like flatbread that soaks up the sauces perfectly!

I need to work on getting the spirals in the bread, but I look forward to getting lots of practice because they are so delish!

Canjeelo reminds me to mention again that in the Somali language, the “c” is not at all like English. So our new character Caaisho’s name should not be said with a hard “k” sound at the front of her name. Here’s some perfect practice for you!

The first two dishes came out perfectly and I loved the flavors so much that I can’t wait to eat my way through the cookbook. For the canjeelo, I need much more practice, and I have found a more complex version of the recipe that I am going to try next time.

I won’t fill this newsletter with recipes, but if you want to try any of theses dishes without buying a whole cookbook, email me and I’ll send you that recipe, with my notes.

Blood Depths Update

Chapter One is finally done! (Well, at least pre-editing “done.”)

This chapter has been a helluva thing to write. First off, it is told by Caaisho, and it’s the first introduction to her voice, so it’s gotta be great—no pressure! 😂😭

Secondly, it must kick off the story with Action, Baby! I personally don’t need an initial action chapter to get into a book, but I grew up with Robin Mckinley and Susan Cooper and Tolkien, et al, and I don’t mind doing an “ease on down the road” into a story.

But all the advice right now is that your first chapter must kick the reader in the face for people to not put it on their “DNF” list, especially in the genre sandboxes I am playing in.

I first wrote this first chapter years ago, right after I finished Blood Eternal (which was still titled Blood Ad Infinitum, back in those ancient days.)

Then, well, I left The Terrible Publisher, and Blood Depths got set aside for years while I republished everything, blah blah, you know that story.

Then this past summer I finally picked it up again, heavily retooled the first chapter…and realized I was not ready to tell Caaisho’s story, and I had massive research and rewriting to do. I proceeded to jump head-first into that 🏊‍♀️

Last month I cut everything that was in old Chapter One, and started it from scratch. I wrote the chapter, finished it…and suddenly realized it was not an Action Chapter, but a very lovely “get to know the character” chapter. After swearing passionately under my breath (I was at one of my mom’s doctor’s appointments, in a waiting room), I selected the whole damn thing, moved it to Chapter Three (where it doesn’t need much rework to be perfect), and started writing Chapter One Yet A-Fucking-Gain.

I’ve lost count of how many rewrites that is, but honestly we are getting up into Blood Ex Libris territory, where I did a huge re-editing pass every time I got a rejection letter for five long years 🙄

Anyway, I am very excited about this shiny new Chapter One and I hope it will kick you in the face like THIS in a very satisfying way

I have two huge news items that I want to write about, but cannot yet, until they finish working through the stage they are in (publishing is such a frustrating business!) so I am going to keep this newsletter short, and go rework Chapter Three to being exactly the chapter it needs to be. So until two weeks from now, know you are cherished readers, and I hope in all your endeavours you follow the guideline of “Be good or be good at it!” 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

The results from the rematch of the Villaintine's Rematch are in:

“The Things I'll do to your heart, Valentine” is still the winner! I don’t know how to feel, because it is a really strong one (with its dark implicit threat and all), but I was quietly hoping that "If Evil, then why Hot?" might pull ahead, because I’m so very fond of it. But that is the voice of the people, and thank you so much for taking the time to vote!

I guess you all just love a dark implicit threat from a Hot Baddie…

Meet The New Character

I am so pleased to report that I can now go back to saying that “This newsletter is taking me away from working on Book IV, Blood Depths!” 😉

For those new to the newsletter (Hi there! 👋) my poor readers have been waiting for the next stage of Noosh’s journey through the world of the am’r for years now.

First I needed to leave my terrible old publisher and republish the books with IIP (which was a very intense and time-consuming learning experience), then my new publisher wanted some shorter works from me, so I wrote and published Blood Triad, Interview with the Vagabond King, Finding Bela Lugosi, and That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story, all of which pulled me away from Book IV. Then, getting the books into audiobook format kept me very busy with its own learning curve. Then, starting learning how to vend and the decision to try and have a very busy convention/event season last summer through Halloween was a serious pull away from the poor novel. Finally, just as I settled into making time for it, I’ve had to move in with my mom because of her health, and I lost a month of writing just taking her to doctor’s appointments and PT. (All of this while working around the limitations of my own chronic illness, which of course just makes it all so much more fun!)

But now it is February, I am a bit more settled in to life over here, and all I want to do is dive back in to Blood Depths 🌊 (Yes, pun intended.) Last week, as I was sitting around at a 2.5 hour appointment for my mother, I brought the laptop and started the work of reworking Chapter One. (Half the chapters I’ve managed to write have to be completely rewritten, which is too long a story to review here, but I promise the book will be immeasurably better for me doing this.)

This week I’m back at it, finishing up the new, improved chapter one.

I wanted the reason for all this work to be a big surprise to my readers, but that really only works if I can get a book out once a year. Once I’ve been keeping everyone waiting this long, trying to pull off that surprise no long makes sense, as by now I owe you all deeply informative updates on the process, to thank you for sticking around with me all this time 💖

So, I’m going to spill the beans! Noosh is being joined by a new character who is starting her own journey into the world of the am’r: Caaisho.

And as you see, my cover artist Kwasi has already been working with bring her to life!

Caaisho comes from a very different background than Noosh (obviously) and thus is going to respond to the am’r in totally different ways. Also, her introduction is not going to be all “meet-cute in the library” —after all, these are vampire pirates we are dealing with in this book! This is a bumpier road we are all going down together—because, say it with me, “Vampires are actually monsters and they don’t sparkle!” 🚫✨

I hope you’ll love Caaisho as much as you do Noosh. She is also a kick-ass strong woman, who will be bringing a very fresh attitude to dealing with the am’r and their vampiric shenanigans. Bagamil had wanted the am’r world to be shaken up a bit…but none of them are expecting Caaisho! (Here’s how to pronounce it, BTW)

Stay tuned to this channel 📺 to get to know this new character better as I finally get Book IV written for you 📝

The Winners Love Their Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Thanks to the first three of you who wrote in wanting to help me figure out shipping for the bookmarks—and I’m so pleased with how much you all love them 🔖💞

JT was kind enough to share this image 🥰

Happily, I found out that with the new small bubble mailers I bought, and how light the bookmarks are, that I can request it to be sent “First Class — non-machinable” and it costs less than a dollar to ship, so I can ship these for FREE!

Stained Glass Bookmark Blood Ex Libris

These gorgeous — and durable — acrylic bookmarks will take your reading experience to the next level! They are 5" x 1.875" — a perfect size for every book in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series — or any other book in your collection. And they won't add any weight to your bookbag. The artwork is a "stained glass" FREE SHIPPING!

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/stained-glass-bookmark-blood-ex-libris

Which I also can do if they are included in packages with books in, obviously! So if you have a friend who needs a signed copy of any of the books in the series (or if you are filling in your library), don’t worry that throwing one of these beauties in will up your shipping costs—they won’t!

Stained Glass Bookmark Blood Demands

These gorgeous — and durable — acrylic bookmarks will take your reading experience to the next level! They are 5" x 1.875" — a perfect size for every book in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series — or any other book in your collection. And they won't add any weight to your bookbag. The artwork is a "stained glass" FREE SHIPPING!

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/stained-glass-bookmark-blood-demands

And now for a word from this week’s sponsor:

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Vampires have tails!

My Bizarreries segment is still running over in Warren Ellis’ newsletter Orbital Operations. You should go check it out, because he has really excellent recommendations for books, comics, music, and really random cool shit. I actually buy stuff based on his recs!

Click here to read the whole thing

OK, I think that’s enough for this week—I know you’d rather I be writing the next novel, so I’ll hit “publish” and get back to my proper work! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

We started the annual Villantine's Day celebration with the Baddest Bad Guy of the series: Kurgan. As we ramp up to releasing the audiobook of Blood Eternal this year, I wanted to bring back the first batch of Villaintine's cards back for a rematch ⚔️

The winner last time was "The things I'll do to your heart, Valentine" -- and while I do love the threatening nature of that one, I also love both the other options just as much…

The results from the first round…

Also, there are a lot more readers of this newsletter now than when I first ran this poll, so I think it's only right that I run this one again, and let our new friends have their input on this deeply important matter. So here are your choices:

OK, now, here’s the poll. Let the best card win!

If you would like any of the images to send to friends, just let me know and I will send you the image, sized for easy email sharing 💌

I’ll announce the winner in the next newsletter, so stay tuned to this great channel 📺

Something kinda exciting has happened 💥

I now have a wee guest spot over at Warren Ellis’ newsletter (the comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter), sharing “Raven Belasco’s Bizarreries” every week. His newsletter is one of the few I make time for regularly (along with Cecilia Tan’s and Tiffany Trent’s) so I recommend it highly to you.

This is the first one! Follow Orbital Operations to read the further ones!

Book Recommendation: Bound by the Blood 🩸🩸🩸

Two members of The Big Glasses Brigade 🤓

So, you all know my life has been subsumed by becoming the caregiver to my mother and needing to move in with her for the foreseeable future. But I did manage to get out yesterday to my salon for a very overdue haircut and color, and then after that to Cecilia's book launch, which was conveniently at my beloved Pandemonium Books

I just frickin' adore Cecilia. She is one of those people I can talk for hours with and then, when we have to go do other things, be sad because the conversation felt all-too-short.

Getting to be friends with Cecilia is one of the wonderful perks of having become an author. I've been a fan of C. Tan since, I dunno, college or right after? Pretty sure I found her in Blue Blood Magazine? This is a person whom I idolized from afar, and who I now get to be friends with?! I am a writer for many reasons ... but the perk of getting to hang out with authors you adore is not to be sneezed at 😉

There was real excitement about this book, which is described as “An Urban Fantasy BDSM Romantic Suspense“ (so if you like those things, GO GET IT)

It’s on the top of my to-read pile, but you don’t need my review, because Cecilia has only gone and gotten a review from Anne Muthafuckin’ Rice’s son (I’m what you could call painfully jealous) and I probably couldn’t do a better review than this anyway:

If you haven’t voted, scroll back up and do so! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you will recall from the last email, my entire life has been thrown up in the air, as I have moved in with my mom to become her caregiver as we try to get her to be able to walk again. More about that later in the email, but I have finally started to move my office into her home, and get set up to do direct sales from her house, and all the stuff an indie author needs 😮‍💨

So I can finally share our incredible new reader swag: Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Everyone’s favorite cover!

I am totally in love with this one!

I wanted to present these gorgeous bookmarks to you all set and ready to go, but I am missing one vital piece of information for our Shopify store: how much USPS will charge for shipping them! I’m used to dealing with getting the books out, but for orders of just these amazing bookmarks by themselves, I have no idea what it will cost 🤔

So it’s giveaway time! 🎁

The first three people who email me and request either the Blood Ex Libris or Blood Demands bookmark will get their order for FREE, and you’ll be doing me a favor, as I both need to find out how much they cost to ship, and also get to know the local post office where I’m now living.

🆓 Email me and tell me which bookmark you want – you might win a free one!

I honestly can’t tell which one I like best!

Argh! They are so good! 🤩

OK, that’s all the business stuff for this email, keep reading if you just want to keep up with me, or go on about your day 🙂

It’s been a FUCKING INSANE two weeks since last I wrote to you. I’ve moved from my house into my mom’s guest bedroom (and office!) The first week, she was in terrible pain, and everything was a huge, exhausting production, and I spent every moment of the day attending to her and trying to get her life back in some kind of order, as well as doctor’s appointments and PT.

At the end of the second week, due to some useful pain management, we are doing a little better. I am hopeful that I might be able to get a few hours each day to myself to write and do the other business of being a writer.

Never have I wished that the am’r would pay me a visit more. Seeing what aging is putting my mom through is terrible, and as rough and violent as the am’r world is, getting old as a kee is a billion times harder…

If you have elderly people in your life, give them a call and tell them that they are superheroes who kick ass each day in the face of all that an aging body is throwing at them, and how unhelpful health care can be, and how poorly society in general treats the elderly 🦸‍♀️

OK, that all said, next month is going to have some far more exciting emails coming out to you. Because our annual Villiantine’s Day has not been forgotten! And even more exciting news to follow that…!

Archie helping me write this newsletter on my mom’s sofa

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Hey Fabulous Readers!

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the January newsletters aren’t going to be quite as thrilling as I had planned. My Mom had a serious health situation back in October, and she isn’t recovering well. I needed to pack up myself and Archie and move in with her for a while to help her with physical therapy and all the stuff she needs to get back on her feet — literally!

However, this means I’m away from my office, and most of my time and energy will be going to helping out my mom, not doing cool stuff for the books. So all planned stuff has been abruptly moved to February, and thus the two January newsletters are not going to be packed full with all the exciting stuff that was previously scheduled.

What this means for you is actually not bad news, because I will only have my laptop with me, and there’s not much I can do on my laptop except work on my next novel. So in between physical therapy sessions and stuff, I will be full steam ahead on Blood Depths, without other business distractions getting in the way. Since I know this is what you all want most from me, well, like I said, not bad news for you!

I was thinking about what to do with these two “lost newsletters” for this month while I was walking Archie this morning, and I decided what I could give you during this time-period was a couple “getting to know Raven” deep dives, since that’s always something you Fantabulous Newsletter Readers seem to enjoy.

But first, for those of you who were too busy to go grab the Sandu Xmas story, it’s ready and waiting for you — and has gotten some great reviews so far 🥰

Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas: A Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series Holiday Story

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A delightful addition to the world of Blood Ex Libris!
I've been a fan of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series since I first met Anushka crouching in the desert alongside a rodent. Getting to see where Sandu was in those endless months while she waited for him to fulfill the promise of their first tiny kiss is both satisfying and fascinating. This short story works well on its own, but adding it to the rich detail of Blood Ex Libris makes it all the better. It's a great hors d'oeuvre to pull you into the rest of the series, or a lovely lagniappe if you've already read the series.

www.amazon.com/Draculas-Terrible-Horrible-No-Good-Christmas-ebook/dp/B0GBYWZLSY

To start us off, here’s… How You Build A Bookworm

The seeds for my eventually being the writer you know today were planted very early. My mom read me Lord of the Rings when I was five years old, and it definitely gave me a standard of what to expect from reading, one that the public school system was not prepared for.

And I wanted to read! I came home crying from the first day of kindergarten, and my mom, very worried, asked, “What happened at school?” And I responded, “I didn’t learn how to read!”

Eventually, the alphabet had been banged into my brain, and I was reading sentences. I was not enjoying those sentences, because the school was giving me books like Gordon the Goat. Now, Gordan was not having The Battle of Five Armies or engaging with dragons, or visiting Lothlorien. As I recall, the highlight of Gordon’s day was eating a tin can. Not very compelling stuff.

The next family story about me and reading comes when my mom was called into school because I was failing reading comprehension, in first grade. They were giving us these cards with a story on one side, and questions about the story on the other side. I was answering those questions not just wrong, but like I was on drugs at that tender age.

Luckily for me, the first grade teacher cared about her students, and she had taken time to ask me some questions, and had figured out that I had read the stories on the front of the cards, thought they were deeply stupid, had rewritten them in my head to be better stories, and was then answering the questions based on my far superior narratives 😂

That was probably the last time my mom got called in for any issues with reading or writing, because it very soon became clear that I was having troubles with math, and that became the issue for the rest of my schooling. Since girls weren’t expected to be good at math anyway, nobody troubled to notice that I am dyscalculic. My mom was regularly told, “She can follow the logic of the word problems, then she just gets lazy with the math part.” 🙄

So math became something I dreaded and did as little of as possible, and reading became my escape.

I needed the escape because from second grade on, I was rated as a glasses-wearing nerd, a bookworm and general loser. I was picked last in gym, I had no friends, and basically was a living example of a character from Revenge of the Nerds.

The glasses really were the final nail in my social coffin…

I avoided dealing with those issues by reading every fantasy book that would hold still long enough, making no distinction between juvenile lit and adult fantasy novels. (Starting things off with Lord of the Rings had really ruined me for reading at my age level.) For a nerd, I got very bad grades, because during class I was often holding a fantasy novel under my desk and reading it instead of paying attention.

All of this, of course, was excellent preparation for being a writer later. I agree with Robert Heinlein that “Writing can be learned, but not taught.” I think the best thing anyone can do who wants to be a writer is to read voraciously, through all genres and styles of writing. Doing that not only exposes you to incredible examples of writing, but also shows you how to do every aspect of writing. More importantly, it also teaches you how NOT to do things. If you are reading something and think a character is intolerable or the plot is slow and uncompelling, well, there you go, there’s an example of how not to write! 😁

I could talk about this forever, but this is definitely long enough for a newsletter! For those of you who made it to this point, you are fucking amazing and I appreciate you 🥰

To all my readers, I hope your 2026 has started a bit more smoothly than mine, but at any rate, I look forward to being in contact with you twice a month in the year to come. Please feel free to respond to the newsletters (just hit reply, it’s that easy!) and chat with me about stuff. (There is starting to be a bigger readership, but I’m still at the point where I am accessible to you all. If my plans work out, there will come a day when you write to me and get a reply from my personal assistant who will tell you I appreciate your email but am too busy to respond personally — but since we aren’t there yet, take advantage of it 😉)

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

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SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Since I know this story is what you want most, here is the link!

Amazon.com: Dracula's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas: A Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series Holiday Story eBook : Belasco, Raven

This short Christmas vampire story combines the violence of Die Hard with the sweetness of O. Henry’s "The Gift of the Magi" for a perfect little holiday read.

www.amazon.com/dp/B0GBYWZLSY

If you want to know more first, here’s some info:

The story is set at the same time as the first three chapters of Blood Ex Libris, but from Sandu’s perspective—and yes, that means you get the full story of his being am’r-napped and tortured that he only glosses over at the Big Am’r Summit in the Rave Cave.

So the two main features of the story are: seeing the meeting of Noosh and Sandu’s through Sandu’s eyes, and then the rest of the story is just the kind of thrilling torture and revengeful action-y escape that you want from holiday films like Die Hard, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Red One, or Violent Night. It’s got “Christmas-specific torture” — you’ll need to read it to get it, but I think you’ll all find it a kick in the pants

Plus, for those of you who prefer less open-door spice, this story takes place before all that gets going in Blood Ex Libris, so it’s just violent vampire action, not sexy vampire action. All the other stuff you love is there, however: swearing in Romanian, historical bits, global settings — the usual BAAS recipe for am’r goodness.

I didn’t mean to write this story this year. My publisher has been demanding it for some time now, and suddenly, in late November, the story just started happening in my brain, so I had to rush to get it out on the page.

It actually fucked up quite a few of my other plans, hustling to get the story done and edited and published before Xmas. So please go grab your copy, because I really put the sweat, blood, and tears into this one!

(There was supposed to be a fancier cover — I found a great artist and we were totally on the same page about the cover art, but then there was a misunderstanding about the delivery date. So there will be a better cover in the future, but for now I just wanted to get it out to you all, and since it’s an ebook, the title page works well enough until the real cover comes along.)

(N.B.—if you are completely opposed to spending money on Amazon — which I understand and believe me I wish I could sell books without involving Amazon at all — email me and we’ll get you the story another way)

This is the final newsletter of 2025! 🕰️

I’m exhausted. It’s been an insane year! 😵

📅January — IIP republished Blood Ad Infinitum as Blood Eternal (may I never have to rename a book EVER!) and I got to give a talk with Cecilia Tan to Emerson College about being an indie author

📅February — the second year of the Villaintine’s Day vote. I love this tradition! But also my hand surgery that totally messed up my writing schedule for the whole year

📅March — Die Feen released their song about Blood Eternal “Mistakes”

📅April - May — the drama of writing Finding Bela Lugosi for the doomed Bauhaus anthology, then finding out the editor of said anthology was “not someone you’d want to work with” (I am putting this so very delicately!) and then the quest for getting the rights to use the lyrics from “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” from Bauhaus, managing to get it published for World Dracula Day; plus doing readings online and posting videos about vampires and being an indie author (And it’s still free online!)

Instagram post

📅June — going to the literal Sunnydale Hellmouth and getting to do a panel with the most fantastic Amber Benson

📅July — That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story makes a huge splash, and I attend Readercon for the first time, and totally fall in love with the convention

📅August — Yet another article published in Book Life by Publisher’s Weekly. And I finally get back to work on Blood Depths

📅September — I try vending at new places, like the Dark Forest Oddities Expo (not the greatest success) and the Vampfangs Vampire Market (a shockingly great success)

📅October — I have the best time ever on The Historic Lesbian Motifs podcast and of course Paulette Kennedy’s Live series, and vending at my beloved Pandemonium, as well as having my bestie over for carving punkins on Halloween

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📅November — Back into Blood Depths, but get surprise-attacked by the Sandu Xmas Story that demands to be written…

Editing the Sandu Xmas story two days ago, with the vital assistance of Archie, of course!

📅December — trip to LA to finally record Blood Eternal with Amber Benson, publish Dracula’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas, and working on a whole bunch of other exciting stuff for 2026

I feel like it was a pretty damn important year for both the series and for me as an author and person. Writing the shorter stories proved to me as a writer that I can really get a lot out of writing things that aren’t novels (I had done it before, but once I started writing novels those really took over!) and they also brought a lot of new readers to the series.

One of my goals had been to get out there and vend more and attend more conventions. It was baby-steps, but I think I chose mostly good places and they were worth the time, energy, and money. Because of my chronic illness, committing to three-day events is terrifying, and even a one-day event can cause me to lose a week after in recovery time. My next goal is to figure out vending in a state where I’m not already set up for paying sales tax, and just doing as many conventions as my health will allow.

My biggest goal for 2026 is just to get Blood Depths written as fast and as well as I possibly can. While I think all the distractions in 2025 were worthy endeavors, there are a lot of new characters I can’t wait for you to meet, and I really just want to sink back into novel writing, and just do the thing I love most about being an author—you know, write books—with less Other Stuff getting in the way.

Thank you all for sticking with me through another year of trying to figure out how to do this indie author thing. You newsletter readers are really the rock in the storm for me, and I deeply appreciate every one of you who takes the time to read each bi-monthly email, respond to polls and other questions, and support each story as it comes your way.

I hope you have a safe and joyful holiday season, and I look forward to sharing the world of the am’r with you in 2026! 🥂 And of course, until the next newsletter, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff