Today I am so pleased to welcome Cari Z to Joyfully Jay. Cari has come to talk to us about what’s going on with her writing career. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

 

Learning To Expect The Unexpected

Hey there! It’s Cari Z, and I’ve got to tell you right off the bat that my visit here on Jay’s wonderful blog isn’t going to be what I thought it would back when we scheduled it.

Allow me to explain the weird title of this post, darlins. At the beginning of this year, I wrote a book. It’s a fun, action-packed adventure book that sends our heroes all over the place searching for a stolen cultural treasure and avoiding being blown up by the thieves at the same time. I sent that book in to the publisher who’d contracted it, patted myself on the back, and then…strange things began to happen with said publisher. There were monetary shenanigans going on, and they only got worse over the following weeks and months.

A few months ago, I pulled most of my titles with this publisher. I just wasn’t comfortable with them holding onto my intellectual property when they couldn’t be honest about their troubles. I wanted to stick it out for my new release though—maybe things would get better, after all! I had gorgeous cover art! I had some great early reviews! I was excited!

Earlier this month, my new release, The Art of Possession, came out with Dreamspinner Press. It fell very, very flat. By then, I’d pretty much expected that. It became apparent to me that I needed to move on in my author career, and so I asked for this book to be returned to me as well. I’ll be looking into self-publishing it, along with my backlist, once I’ve got a chance to breathe and figure out what the hell I’m doing.

Fortunately for me, I’ve got a lot of support on offer from other authors, including my excellent co-author L.A. Witt. She and I are writing the fifth book in the Bad Behavior series right now, which is turning out so well! I’ve also got a new release co-authored with Marie Sexton (practically my neighbor here in Colorado) in March/April—it’s science fiction with a smidgeon of romance featuring twin brothers salvaging a living in deep space, a human colony on the moon Titan, and the aftereffects of an alien invasion. It’s pretty epic, if I do say so myself.

I’ve got some irons in the fire to write tie-in fiction for tabletop games (think Settlers of Catan) and, in an amazing turn of events, made it into Pitch Wars, a yearly mentorship contest that attracts thousands of prospective mentees to only about a hundred mentors/mentor teams. My book for that is called Magical Hazmat, which follows a supernatural crime scene cleaner who’s trying to inject a little science into the magical messes she has to clean up. My MC is bisexual, but the book isn’t a romance and honestly, that was part of what made it so hard to write.

Anyway…yeah. I might be out a publisher, probably out some money (though not nearly as much as many other authors, who NEED TO BE PAID) but life goes on. It mostly revolves around my adorable, exhausting two-year-old, but she just makes it easier to bear. If you’re interested in supporting me in the future, look for the re-release of The Art of Possession in the next few months, and hopefully some other Dreamspinner backlist titles as well!

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