Hi Ink Drinkers!

I have some news.  I just finished publishing my new novel, Wild Princes.  

Synopsis:

Welcome to Sleeping Beauty Inc.!

Book One: Rose Red - You can't buy a girl! But in the year 2214, you can. She can whip you into shape, design your diet, be your personal stylist, and turn you from geek to chic in just one year. What will happen if your model isn't what they promised?

Book Two: Sleeping Prince - You shouldn't let a woman buy you! Gage is a solarship pilot who transports Sleeping Beauty Inc. models between the moons of Jupiter. His favorite is a model named Iona. She has a contract for him. Dare he refuse?

Book Three: Beauty of Ares - Tired of hiring temporary models? Why not try an arranged marriage through Sleeping Beauty Inc.'s Gold Edition catalog? Look no further than Lisbet. She's the daughter of an 'old money' diamond merchant. She'll dazzle your contact list with her wave of black hair and her violet eyes. She'll even travel to Mars, a place infamous for its cruelty toward purchased models. After her father sells her to Vantz Bloomburg, she'll do anything. 

Book Four: Goldilocks Zone - Welcome to Venus! On the floating panels of the yellow planet, they're hosting Goldilocks Zone. It's a game show, reality TV, and a beauty pageant all rolled into one! Ornette is a Sleeping Beauty Inc. model who has disobeyed her owners so many times that her left hand has been burned black. How will she compete in a game show where the object is to impress Papa Bear, Uncle Bear, and Brother Bear, but a man named Desmond, like the Cheshire Cat, keeps appearing to turn her heart upside down?

Book Five: Wild Princes - Once upon a time, there was a King and a Queen who longed for a child. The Queen prayed to ten magical fairies, and each one of them granted her wish because she gave birth to ten princes... Not really. Far in the future, ten baby boys were born as part of a genetic experiment, and after the scientists were gunned down, each of the boys went wild in his own way. Join each of the princes as they have a single adventure of their own. Start the book with the Prince of Ocean Spray and finish the book with the Prince of Time. 

With that said, there are a few new things about this book. For one thing, I used to start every new Sleeping Beauty Inc. book with pretty much entirely new characters, so the audience didn't need to know what happened in the previous books. It was nice if they knew, but it wasn't mandatory. This book pretty much throws that whole concept out the window. If you haven't at least read Sleeping Prince, you're gonna have a bad time. Well, maybe not a BAD time, but you won't get the full scope of the stories. It will definitely be more fun if you've read the other books.

Next, this book was not posted to Inkitt, Quotev, Royal Road, Fictionpress, Scribblehub, or Tapas prior to going up for sale on Amazon, Google Play, Apple Books, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Obooko, Free E-books.net, Digilibraries, and all those sites. The thing is, I got really bored with posting to those free sites. Hardly anyone wrote in, I got thousands of soliciting emails from bots, I would come very close to forgetting to post on the days I was supposed to, and other stuff like that.

I just want to write.

And I'm really excited about this book. It's ten short stories about Gage and his 'brothers'. Here's the link for the trailer on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mqQY9ErqEA

I hope each of you will decide to buy it as an ebook, an audiobook, or a paperback!

Teardrop Editions

I have turned to the next chapter in the book of my writing journey.

Chapter One: Write novels on lined paper in a duotang.

Chapter Two: Write novels on a computer and share them with no one.

Chapter Three: Write fanfiction and post it online.

Chapter Four: Write books for publication.

Chapter Five: Become an independent novelist.

Chapter Six: Stop charging for books.

Chapter Seven: Teardrop Editions.

I suppose you're wondering what the Teardrop Editions could possibly be?  Well, I'll tell you.  I'm now going to charge a small fee for my ebooks and audiobooks, but the Teardrop editions will be free.  They will be offered one year after the release of a new title.  You see, I've been forced to charge for some of my books, and it's been helping to offset some of my author fees.  

For one thing, most of the official covers for my books were drawn by real artists.  I need to pay the artists.  I will use AI generated covers for the Teardrop Editions.  For another, I use a service that has fees to generate audiobooks.  This way, I can recoup some of my costs while still offering titles for free.

Free is important to me.  I went to libraries when I was a kid and took out books for nothing.  To be honest, the idea of paying for books is a little off to me, but I'm an author, and I have these bills.  They're small bills, so I'm assigning small price tags to my books.  

Sadly, this also means that I will no longer be uploading my novels to Inkitt, Quotev, Royal Road, Scribblehub, or Tapas before they've been available on GooglePlay Books, Apple Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all the bookstore sites for at least a year.  What can I say?  I've been receiving more interest for my books on GooglePlay than I have on those chapter-by-chapter sites.  It's a shame, but it's true.  

More news to come later!

Dream of the Wolf

Hi Ink Drinkers,

I'm here today to talk about my new story, 'Dream of the Wolf'.  Here's the synopsis:

Selphie awoke in a sealed room surrounded by ladders.  On the bed next to her is a white wolf.  He has promised not to EAT her, but she doesn't believe him.  Wolves can't climb trees or ladders.  She could leave him there, but what horrors will she find on the upper floors to send her back down to the wolf who swears he isn't hungry?

Originally, I got the idea for this story when I was doing a brainstorming session for stories that could go in a fantasy anthology.  I did a contemporary romance anthology, and it has enjoyed a shocking amount of success.  I really don't deserve to be surprised. Contemporary romance is probably the most popular genre in the world.  However, I got really excited by the prospect of writing a bunch of anthologies, so I got my brain really busy and cooked up a bunch of ideas for an anthology.  

If I'm making a fantasy anthology, the first book has to be 'Heart's Key' and then 'The House with Two Halves'.  But, I didn't want the whole thing to simply be fantasy romance, even though romance is my favorite genre.  

I also have this sick little corner of my mind where I want to turn concepts that are traditionally used to write smutty stories and turn them into something human that awakens something noble in a person instead of something sexually exciting.  I had already done it for vampires with my book, 'The Blood That Flows', and then I did it again for billionaires in my book, 'Cut Like Glass' (I bet some of you are surprised by that system of logic since I don't focus that hard on Bart's money in the story.  I only made him a millionaire.  If I had it to do over, I would have made him even richer... However, it stands nicely as it is), and so I wanted to do a wolf story. 

Here it is.

It's available to read now on:

Royal Road https://www.royalroad.com/profile/183381

Inkitt https://www.inkitt.com/StephanieVanOrman

Scribblehub https://www.scribblehub.com/profile/152188/stephanievanorman/

Tapas https://tapas.io/tigrix

Quotev https://www.quotev.com/StephanieVanOrman

It's also available as an audiobook on GooglePlay and AppleBooks.  As I celebrated before, it is killing it on GooglePlay.  It's breaking my download records left and right.  I sure hope no one is expecting a werewolf romance novel from me because this isn't it.  

Cheers!

Audiobooks on Spotify

Getting my books up on Spotify was one of my big goals for the year.  Look at that!  It's March, and I already got it done.  

Let's talk about my other writing goals for the year.  

BTW: Last year was a horrible year.  I floundered at everything I tried to do.  I've been trying desperately to stop that trend in its tracks and get back to winning.  

So, here are the plans for this year.

First: 

I have posted the first 37 chapters of Goldilocks Zone on Inkitt, Quotev, Royal Road, Scribblehub, and Tapas.

It's the fourth book of the Sleeping Beauty Inc. series.  Here's the synopsis:

Ornette is a model who has been bought and sold many times.  This time, she's been sold to participate in a fashion reality TV show on Venus called Goldilocks Zone.

When this book is finished, it will be the longest of the Sleeping Beauty Inc. books.  Rose Red was around 65k, Sleeping Prince was around 75k, Beauty of Ares was about 85k, and Goldilocks Zone is the longest at a whopping 99k.  I can't write any more of these books because I no longer write books that are over 100k.  Just kidding.  I have a few more ideas for these books, and since they get tons of readers, there might be another book in the works, but not immediately.

I release chapters on Mondays and Thursdays.

Second:

Dream of the Wolf is a short story that has been divided into 100% necessary chapters, so I'm calling it a novelette.  I have released it early in its entirety on GooglePlay Books (audiobook and ebook), AppleBooks, Barnes and Noble, Baker & Taylor, Hoopla, Smashwords, Kobo, Draft2Digital Audio, Vivlo, Tolino, and so many more, it's hard to remember them all.  It will get released on Inkitt, Quotev, Royal Road, Scribblehub, Tapas, and Fictionpress after I finish releasing Goldilocks Zone.

Here's the synopsis:

Selphie awoke in a sealed room surrounded by ladders. On the bed next to her is a white wolf. He has promised not to EAT her, but she doesn't believe him. Wolves can't climb trees or ladders. She could leave him there, but what will she find on the upper floors to send her back down to the wolf who swears he isn't hungry?

Third:

This is a novelette/novella that is close to being complete.  It is not available anywhere yet.  I haven't even written a synopsis for it yet.  I think it will probably be ready to have a release similar to Dream of the Wolf where it is released on the big sites before it's available on the read-only sites.  If all goes well, it will be ready to be released before summer.

Here's the synopsis:

Leonidas is a captain in the army of a King he hates. On the night when the rebels take the city, Leonidas only wants to find his brother.  Ciphas is a guard in the King's harem.  Leonidas hears a story about a guard who was thrown into the tiger's pit with a harem girl.  Racing to unlock the pit, he finds nothing but dead bodies and a very beautiful woman resting in the arms of the tiger.

You got chills, right?

Fourth:

Curses!

It seems that I am not yet ready to release the cover for this book yet.  All the same, let me tell you about it.  Curses! is a full-length novel I've had on my writing desk for at least five years.  It's a good story, and it's 90% finished, so I don't want to discard it.  Except it's reached critical mass.  

To me, that means that I can't edit the first chapter anymore.  I can't edit the second chapter either... Or the first plot arch.  I've started to finish it too many times and had to walk away for various reasons.  I can't work on certain parts of it anymore.  So, since I have reached such a deadly crossroads, I have found that there is only one way to proceed.  

Once I finish releasing these three books - it's time for Curses!  Here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to sit down at my computer on the first day, and I'm going to release each chapter as soon as I finish it with zero regard for what day that is or how it happens.  It's a sloppy way to do things, but I can't see another way forward.  If I don't just start releasing it - it will NEVER come out.  And it is too good to leave on the editing table any longer.  

So doom or death or dread or dead... It's coming out.  It's a full-on fantasy romance with tons of combat.  I don't think it quite crosses the line to dark romance, but we'll see.  I'm going to war with my book.  Good luck to me.  

I hope you enjoy what I have in store for you this year, and if you read anything on GooglePlay, Royal Road, Inkitt, or Amazon, I hope that you will leave a review.  I've been in a review desert lately.

Dictionary of Characters

Sometimes, I think something like what I'm about to do would be useful, so I have made these before, but this time I'm going to post it online since I seem to do a better job of keeping track of my documents that way.  I would also like to say that this is not a complete list.  It is merely a list of the primary characters that I can remember off the top of my head.  The leads are getting marked.  I hope you enjoy!

A

Alexander - Whatever You Want

Axel - If Diamonds Could Talk

Antony - Hidden Library

Apostate - Sleeping Prince

Armen - Beauty of Ares

Annaliese - Born in January

Aaron - Blog Entries of the Brokenhearted

B

Blanche - Kiss of Tragedy

Beth/Bethany - His 16th Face

Brandon - His 16th Face

Bobby - If Diamonds Could Talk

Benediction - Sleeping Prince

Beck/Beckett - Beauty of Ares

Blueleg - Heart's Key

Bart - Born in January

C

Christina - Whenever You Want

Colin - Whenever You Want

Cerise - Kiss of Tragedy

Carly - Behind His Mask

Christian - His 16th Face

Charles - His 16th Face

Clementine - Hidden Library

Carver - If I Tie U Down

Cinni - Sleeping Prince

Charcoal - Beauty of Ares

Cassica - Beauty of Ares

Carlos - Beauty of Ares

Crimp - Octavia Girl

Conrad - Octavia Girl

Celestina - Octavia Girl

Careen - The Land of Umbrellas

D

Dominic - Whenever You Want

Dudley - The Blood That Flows

Derrach - Behind His Mask

Dante - Sleeping Prince

E

Evander - Behind His Mask

Excelyn - Octavia Girl

F

Fiona - Kiss of Tragedy

Falon - Rose Red

Felicity-Ann - His 16th Face

Faire-Isle - Hidden Library

Fletch/Fletcher - If I Tie U Down

Favel - Octavia Girl

Fallcet - Octavia Girl

Faydra - Heart's Key

Fayette - The House With Two Halves

G

Gibson - His 16th Face

Gage - Sleeping Prince

Gavin - The Land of Umbrellas

H

Helona - Kiss of Tragedy

Harrison - Rose Red

Hattie - Hidden Library

Heratic - Sleeping Prince

Hessia - Beauty of Ares

I

Intarsia - Hidden Library

Iona - Sleeping Prince

Invocation - Beauty of Ares

J

Juliet - Kiss of Tragedy

June - Hidden Library

Jenna - Octavia Girl

Josh - Octavia Girl

John - Blog Entries of the Brokenhearted

K

Kalavan - Behind His Mask

Keziah - Rose Red

Kimberley - Born in January

Kerry - Blog Entries of the Brokenhearted

L

Laura - Whenever You Want

London - The Blood That Flows

Loring - Behind His Mask

Lance - His 16th Face

Leviticus - Sleeping Prince

Lisbet - Beauty of Ares

Lucy - Octavia Girl

Lou - Octavia Girl

Leander - Heart's Key

Lindsay - The Land of Umbrellas

M

Mark - Whenever You Want

Murmur - Behind His Mask

Marshall - The Blood That Flows

Misha - Octavia Girl

Mirr - Octavia Girl

Muriel - Tiny Wishes

Marissa - The Land of Umbrellas

N

Nixie - Kiss of Tragedy

Narissa - Rose Red

Natalie - If I Tie U Down

O

Osric - Rose Red

Olivine - Sleeping Prince

Oliver - The Land of Umbrellas

P

Paulo - Kiss of Tragedy

Pierce - The Blood That Flows

Paige - Rose Red

Pricina - His 16th Face

Pearl - Hidden Library

Philip - Octavia Girl

Q

Quinn - If I Tie U Down

R

Rylan - Kiss of Tragedy

Roan - The Blood That Flows

Rachel - Behind His Mask

Rhuk - If Diamonds Could Talk

Rin/Ringlet - If I Tie U Down

Raylynn - Sleeping Prince

Ryatt - Octavia Girl

Rennett - Octavia Girl

Rossi - Octavia Girl

Raif - Tiny Wishes

Ricky/Richenda - The Land of Umbrellas

S

Seth/Sethos - Kiss of Tragedy

Sweeper - The Blood That Flows

Schroder - The Blood That Flows

Sarah - Behind His Mask

Serissa - Behind His Mask

Sarafina - Behind His Mask

Serena - Behind His Mask

Steve (Skull Boy) - His 16th Face

Salinger - Hidden Library

Shannon - If I Tie U Down

Simon - If I Tie U Down

Stonic - Sleeping Prince

Sherman - Sleeping Prince

Sardius - Octavia Girl

Smoothie - Octavia Girl

Scion - Octavia Girl

T

Taylor - Kiss of Tragedy

Tate - The Blood That Flows

Tawnee - Kiss of Tragedy

Tremor - Behind His Mask

Trevor - Rose Red

Trinity - His 16th Face

Tallis - If I Tie U Down

Tiffany - If I Tie U Down

Todd - If I Tie U Down

Theology - Sleeping Prince

Tanya - Sleeping Prince

Testament - Sleeping Prince

Tuton - Sleeping Prince

Tiffania - Beauty of Ares

Temptic - Octavia Girl

Torsten - The House With Two Halves

Trevor - Tiny Wishes

Trip - Born in January

U

V

Valance - Behind His Mask

Veda - Hidden Library

Vantz - Beauty of Ares

Vash - Octavia Girl

W

Wystan - Rose Red

Wyn/Wyntessa - Tiny Wishes

X

Y

Z

Zaphier - Rose Red

Octavia Girl Vol. IV

Hi Ink Drinkers, 

Let's talk about Octavia Girl Vol. IV.  Soo.... I am not really ready to release this.  If I lived in a perfect world, I wouldn't release it.  I have a complete manuscript, but... I'd really rather sit on it for a few months, edit the hell out of it, and release it then.  Except... I'm getting a little flack from my readers.  

In response to impatient readers, I have to say:

1. I could write a volume of Octavia Girl once a year for the rest of my life, but if you're all going to explode between release dates... I'd rather not.

2. I'm not getting paid for this.

3. I want to ban impatient readers.  I'm not talking about 'I'm so excited for your next book!  When's it coming out?'  I mean explosions blaming me for having an incomplete series.  'I never read incomplete series and if I'd had any idea that yours was incomplete, I never would have read it.  You have wasted my time and ruined my life and now I wish you would just ^*&."

4. As if all this isn't hard enough..

I don't want to release this book.  If you're thinking that I'm being bullied into releasing it now, that is only partly true.  There are other problems.

Problems like:

1. This is it for the covers.  The artist who did the pictures of Jenna (didn't know she was making pictures of Jenna) and I've run out of pictures from her collection of a girl who looks enough like Jenna to squeak by with my graphic design skills.  I had to give the girl on the fourth cover a nose job so she'd look enough like the girl on the front of the first book.  We've also run dry on possible covers from the artist who did the backgrounds.  It was quite difficult to stitch this fourth cover together and I don't know if I could do a fifth cover without massively sacrificing quality.

2. There hasn't been enough interest for me to have reasonable belief that the average reader will be interested beyond the fourth book.  Normally, I say that if a book has earned 4k hits, it's been worth it.  Well, Octavia Girl earned the necessary number of hits on Royal Road, but not on any of the other sites where it was hosted.  It just hasn't been popular enough.  My Sleeping Beauty Inc. series has been popular enough on all platforms to warrant it's continuance.  Octavia Girl is a weird genre.  It may need time to get more readers and maybe it'll get the necessary popularity after it's complete, but by then I will have moved on.  Oh, the irony.

3. If I pause and pursue other projects, I'll come back to Octavia Girl and I'll have no idea what I had in mind, what I was doing, where I was going, Sardius will have left me and I'll have to dedicate myself to studying my own books in order to finish.  It's better to push myself now than lose all that I've worked for in a haze of forgetfulness.

Octavia Girl Vol. IV will be the last book.

It has to be.  At the end the series will be around 240k.  That's a beast and I don't have the kind of brain that wants to just work on one thing.  I want to work on lots of things, so I don't know if I'll ever even write another series like this in the future.  

I hope you all enjoy this last bit.  I think it's good.  I'm happy with my final draft.  I just wish I had a bit more time to stew over it before I release it.  There will be very little stewing.  I'm releasing it chapter by chapter on Thursdays on the following sites:

Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/64843/octavia-girl

Inkitt: https://www.inkitt.com/stories/scifi/1298721

Quotev: https://www.quotev.com/story/15561209/Octavia-Girl/8

ScribbleHub: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1138250/octavia-girl-vol-iv/

Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Octavia-Girl-Vol-IV

The Land of Umbrellas

Hi Ink Drinkers,

Contemporary romance is blessed.  Whenever I write a contemporary romance piece, it always gets a whack-load of interest from the public compared to my other pieces.  

I struggle to write contemporary romance.  It feels like everything has been done already and there's nothing left to do.  It's easier to write something shorter because then there's less temptation to write overdone cliches.  

The Land of Umbrellas was a difficult piece for me.  If you read it, you won't understand why.  It comes off as pretty effortless... in a good way.  Except that it wasn't.  I kept taking the wrong turn and having to go back and scrap what I'd written.  Finally, this year, I was going to finish it or I was going to die trying.  I think it ended as well as it was going to.  I'm pretty proud.

Here's the synopsis:

Lindsay Thomas wanted to be an actress, but that mostly meant 'acting' like she had her life together. When she gets an opportunity to help one of her acting buddies renovate a hotel for the winter, she moves to Vancouver Island to get a fresh start in a place where it rains all the time and where umbrellas keep popping up to keep her dry.

It's available on RoyalRoad: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/86720/the-land-of-umbrellas

On Quotev: https://www.quotev.com/story/16549586/The-Land-of-Umbrellas/1

On Inkitt: https://www.inkitt.com/stories/romance/1276726