Posts

Showing posts from February, 2023

2/26/23 --- The Quest for Cowmelot out at Midnight!

Image
  Guess what?! The Quest for Cowmelot comes out at midnight! That's right, I bumped up the release date by 4 days! I was able to get it done early so I could have it out to everyone a bit earlier than expected!! :) I'm super excited to finally get this book out there for everyone to enjoy. It is easily one of the stupidest stories I've ever written, but I laughed my ass off the entire time I was putting it together. It's a spoof on every fantasy book/movie/show I have ever loved and I think a lot of people will really like it. The book is also the longest I've ever written, clocking in at a little over 140,000 words (nearly 400 pages).  If you're looking for something hilarious to read that still has a lot of heart and epic adventure, then this book might be the one for you! It's available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited right now, but the paperback version will be going up in a few days (I need to get back home to format the cover properly). I'll also ha

2/23/23 --- At Disney for the week

 Hey all, Apologies for being so quiet this week, but I'm down in Florida with the boys at Disney. We spent all day Tuesday on planes, which had ZERO wifi even though they advertise it. It's $10 to access and the "free" wifi that comes with the flight is for FB messaging only, so that's lame. But oh well. That kinda cut into my writing time a bit, but I've got all day to myself today, so I'm gonna finish up Cowmelot and start putting it together for publishing.  Got some news from work today that I'm not super happy about. I'm keeping my job, so no worries about lay-offs. I've redacted everything else I want to say because I know people at work snoop through my life and will probably end up here. Yesterday the boys and I went to Universal Studios to see everything there. And honestly, I have to say that I wasn't really impressed. There were a few things that were really cool, like walking through Diagon Alley and the Jurassic Park gates, bu

2/20/23 --- Book 3 Cover is here!

Image
  Hey Everyone! Sorry for the lack of posting the past couple of days, I have been elbow-deep in writing like a madman to try to get Cowmelot finished in time for its release! Last week I wrote 28,000 words and I've probably still got 10k more to go before the book is finished, so I'm CRANKING on that. That being said, I wanted to share the new cover with you for Gamma's Dive, book #3 of the Tales of the Tellurian Pack! I really love how this one turned out! Each book in the series has a distinct color scheme and I love the way they all look together, it's super visually appealing! I've gone ahead and put up the pre-order for this book, so that should be live in the next 24 hours. I set it for the end of June, but I fully intend to have this book out in April. Usually, I give myself too much time on purpose just in case something comes up in my personal life. But I don't anticipate anything crazy besides trying to put the garden in. That will definitely be takin

2/17/23 --- Get in loser, we're doing crazy cow shit

Image
  I have been writing my butt off for the past couple of days! Last night I managed to hit 5200 words before midnight, which was amazing. I'm getting so close to finishing Cowmelot and of course, it always takes longer than I expect. I'm cranking as hard as I can today and all through this weekend to get it done by Monday so I can get the final manuscript uploaded before I board the plane to Florida. I'd like to be able to work on other stuff while I'm flying and not have to worry about shitty hotel wifi for uploading large files. However, the truth is I have until next week Friday to get this uploaded, so I've got plenty of time if I need to take it. No reason to stress about it too hard. Part of the words I did last night was in Beta's Bliss as well. I'm well past the halfway point in that now and heading toward sex scene #2. That will take place just before the big falling-out scene, making it all the more tragic. This book will definitely get finished ov

2/16/23 --- So close I can taste it!

 You guys, Cowmelot is SO close to being done! I'm reaching the point where it's harder to STOP writing than it is to continue. Once I get started, I can barely step away from the computer for anything else. I'm forcing myself to take breaks at this point. I really hope I can have it finished before I go on vacation and at this pace, I might be able to get it done! Or, at the very least, finish it on the plane. However, since I have most of Monday to myself and off from work, I think I should be able to get it finished. Beta's Bliss is coming along as well. I'm finally past the 50% mark and the first major sex scene, so writing from here will be a bit easier. I sincerely hope to finish the book while I'm on vacation and prep it for a quick release in early March. At this rate, I'm gonna have to start posting chapters a lot faster on my Patreon so that they can have the whole story before I release it! I usually schedule them out a bit so I can make sure I

2/15/23 --- Words, words, words

 Omg you guys, I am grinding so hard to get this fricken Cowmelot book done. My god. I'm so close to the end of the book that it's killing me to not have it done yet, but at the same time, I just can't write for hours on end right now. I've been burning the candle at both ends a lot lately, to the tune of being up at 7am and going to bed past 1am. I know if I push it much further than that, I'm gonna hit burnout so hard that I'll be down for a month and that's not an option. I'm doing my best to find a little bit of balance and reign myself in. The good news is that burnout usually doesn't hit me when I'm feeling super motivated, and I'm definitely motivated right now. Thanks to the success of Alpha's Rejection and my impending vacation (only two days of work left) I feel like I could take on the world right now. And I fully intend to if I'm being honest. Today I took pictures of all my notes on my 4ftx8ft whiteboard and erased it all

2/14/23 --- Happy Valentines Day!

 Happy V-day to all of you that celebrate it! I feel like I spent most of the day at work, but thankfully it wasn't too crazy. Once I was out though, I got to spend some good quality time with the boys. We ordered out and had a nice meal, which was great. I'm the cook of the house, but I never turn down an opportunity to have a night off, especially after the recent work days I've been having. Either way, it was great to get to spend the evening with them :) I lost a little bit of writing time due to the holiday, but I don't mind. I still managed to hit my 1500 word count plus some before midnight. I put all of it into Cowmelot today just because that project needs to get finished. I'm definitely getting really close now. Right now I'm doing a big reveal for the main character, telling him the truth about cows and beef. Spoilers: he's not a fan of that. However, it will give him the motivation he needs to take on the villain, so that's important. Hopeful

2/13/23 --- Romance #3 cover is ordered!

 Man, I don't know what's up with work lately, but it's just been running me into the ground day after day. Again today was especially hard and I had to defend myself more than once because people were trying to play off my job as "easy". This coming from people who haven't been doing anything near my job for months at this point. Ugh. Oh well. The day is over, I don't want to stew over it. Got a huge amount of writing done yesterday, 4700 words before midnight! Today I'm almost 2k into Cowmelot with a couple hours left to write. I think I'm gonna switch over to Beta's Bliss for the rest of the night because I need a bit of a palate cleanser. Doing almost 10k in the past few days for Cowmelot alone has been a lot. Fantasy is a ton of fun to write, but it definitely requires a lot more in-depth thought and world-building than contemporary romance. Romance is more about the characters and their thoughts, which come SUPER easy to me, so it doesn&#

2/12/23 --- Busy weekend, work on Cowmelot

 Yesterday was a bit hectic to say the least. I didn't get a ton of sleep before I had to be up in the morning for our D&D game that my friends and I stream on Twitch. It was a great game and we left at the craziest cliffhanger, so I had a lot of fun. There were a few interactions with other characters I had that I REALLY got into. It's not often I actually lose myself in the role-playing aspect of things and to be honest, it's a little scary. Even now, a day after the game, I'm still pissed at this completely made-up person for what he did to my character. It's kinda cool that you can get so involved with something like that and feel like you really and truly experienced it.  The power of role-playing games, right? After all that, I had to pick up groceries, kinda rush to make dinner, snag the tiniest of cat naps, then me and one of the boys went out to a play called Miss Holmes. It was basically Sherlock Holmes but gender-bent, so Watson and Holmes were both w

2/10/23 --- Craziest work day in a long time....

 These past couple of days at work have been absolute murder. I've NEVER been so unbelievably busy. Like to the point where even a bathroom break is not an option and that's insane. I spent 3 full hours in meetings this morning, back to back, then spent the rest of the day working my ass off so we could just barely end the day with only one thing left to do. Literally, 8 straight hours of craziness and I am NOT a fan. Days like today are the reason I keep driving at being a full-time author. Working a day job like this one and then working for 4-5 hours a day on my author stuff on top of all that really doesn't leave me a lot of time to spend with my boys or doing much else with my life. I'd like to get outside or have a moment to run errands if I need them. I can't even schedule appointments to get my car fixed or get new glasses at this point. And the worst part is, I'm the ONLY person on my team at work, so taking time off isn't really an option. Of cours

2/9/23 --- More words and more marketing!

 Today's update is much like yesterday's, just putting in as many words as I can muster. I've got about 2100 in as of writing this, but plan to keep going until at least 11pm to see how many I can get in. All of them so far are in Cowmelot, but I'm hoping to get the first official sex scene written in Beta's Bliss as well. I'm sure I'll be able to get through most of it tonight. Sex scenes are difficult for me to write, so I usually take them in pieces. Also, on the Facebook ad front, I've continued to research and brainstorm new audiences to market my werewolf romances too (thank you D&D friends :) ) and it's already showing a bit of success in less than 24 hours! My friends helped to point out to me that there are several groups of people that would like my work, especially groups that are geared more towards women (the biggest readers of shifter romance) and helped me to narrow down how to target them. The results thus far have been great and

2/8/23 --- Another 4000 words down...

 Today was my second day in a row putting in 4000 words total (across two books), which is fantastic! I love when I get into a groove like this because books just seem to fly out of me! In the past four days I've put in nearly 12,000 words, which is a TON of progress. My goal for the year is 1500 words per day, so this puts me well above goal. Cowmelot is now moving into the final battle stages of the book. Total word count right now is 109,500, making it the longest book I've ever written. It'll probably be at least 120k, if not 125k by the time I'm finished. My sincerest wish is to have it nearly completed by the end of this upcoming weekend. I'm placing it as priority #1, so I don't work on anything else until the words are done for this book first. Beta's Bliss is coming along as well. I just passed 23,000 total words, putting me nearly at the halfway point. I'm breaking into the first true sex scene of the book, which is about perfect for the pacing

2/7/23 --- Cowmelot is almost done!

 Well, you heard it here first, The Quest for Cowmelot is reaching its final stages!  I'm happy to say that we are now passed the beginning of Act III and entering the "dark night of the soul" phase of the book. Thankfully that will only be a single chapter and then I'll start writing the FINAL BATTLE! I'm super excited to finally get this book finished and wrap it up for publishing. My hope is to get the majority of it done this week. There should only be 3-5 more chapters left before I call it done. I looked back on my stats for this book and not only is it one of the longest I've ever written, but it will also be one of my longest projects I've ever worked on. I started writing this insanity back during COVID lockdowns, as a joke, never really intending to finish it. In July 2022 I finally pulled the trigger and decided to write as far as I could, seeing if I could make it an actual book. And now, here we are, looking at a March 2nd 2023 release date! T

2/6/23 --- Patreon Makeover is complete!

Image
  Welcome to the new and improved Patreon of Blake R. Wolfe ! I spent most of the weekend and little bit of time today overhauling my Patreon page so that it reflects my new work and keeps on theme a bit better. I've fleshed out the reward tiers, the rewards themselves, my goals, and gave everything a shiny new banner! I even went ahead and uploaded a couple chapters from my current WIP, Beta's Bliss, for my patrons! Patreon, for those of you that don't know, is a way to support artists while they create in return for exclusive access, bonus materials, and one-on-one time with the artist themselves. For example, my Patreon will not only post WIP chapters while the book is being written, but I'll be offering free ebooks and even signed copies for people who sign up for my higher tiers! There will also be exclusive bonus scenes for my patrons that won't be published anywhere else. This is my personal thank you for supporting me while I create! Patreon operates as a mo

2/5/23 --- Making progress and making plans

 Today ISNT a rant! Yay! Not a lot to report on my side. I've spent this weekend mostly working on catching up with my writing. Mostly I've been working on Cowmelot since it has the most imminent deadline, but I'm hoping to get a little bit more done on Beta's Bliss tonight as well. I'm mostly excited about Cowmelot at the moment though. I'm in the middle of a huge battle scene, the last one before the final showdown and the end of the book. I'm really hoping I can get the majority of it finished in the next week or so just to give myself a little extra time. Gotta make that 3/2 release date! Not much else to report on. -Blake

2/4/23 --- The Hypocrisy of Art

 Hey all, Today is a little bit of rant, so if you want to skip this one, feel free. Recently, I've seen several of my favorite artists/authors speak about what you should and should not do when making a career out of your art. They give this advice from their cushy lives as full-time artists making enough money to not only support themselves, but a higher class lifestyle that most of us don't ever get the chance to experience. The theme has been "be true to your heart, only create what you love regardless of popularity". I feel this, deep in my bones. And I want so SO badly for it to be something that everyone could do. But that's just not how life works. In order to be a full time artist, you have to grind, and grind hard. You have to create things people like so much that they want to buy them, that they can't live without. Only with several thousand fans of this caliber can you ever even DREAM of going full-time. Following your heart and creating what you

2/3/23 --- I wrote today and stuff...

 Don't have a lot of updates today.  Work was blah. The week overall was fairly relaxed, so that was nice, but that also means we ended up having a lot more meetings than usual. Found out there are some major changes at work coming my way, which I'm not excited about. A lot of good relationship-building work I've done is going to be completely thrown away and I'll have to start all over again. Hate that. The writing was a bit last minute today, but I managed to get in 1900 words before midnight, all of them on Cowmelot. I'm prioritizing that story the most since it has the closest looming deadline. The good news is I think I'm less than 10 chapters from the end of the book really, so that'll be good. At this point, my goal is just to get it done so I meet the deadline. It's gonna be great though, I can feel it! Plus I still have 24 days to get it done and that's LOTS of time. Sales are still going super well for Alpha's Rejection. I'm giving

2/2/23 --- Productive writing day!

 Well, not a lot of time left to get this written before the end of the day, so I guess this'll be a short one! Got a lot of good work done today on both Cowmelot and Beta's Bliss! A grand total of 3500 words between the two of them before midnight, which is awesome! I'd love to write 3000+ every single day because that means I'd write over 1 million words per year! That will definitely be a standard goal once I go full-time (I'd love to do 5k minimum per day) but for now, doing 3500 in a single day is a huge step forward for me. I'm starting to get back into the swing of Cowmelot now and get a feel for how the story is flowing forward. As for Beta's Bliss, I went back and did a little bit of editing on the character interaction to feed into the tropes better, but it's really starting to heat up now. I think I'll be writing the first sex scene tomorrow and hopefully, that means the book will flow even easier from here on out!  Looking forward to shar

2/1/23 --- New Cover and more writing

Image
 Hey all! Well, I forgot to share this the other day, but I figured I will now! Here is the official cover for Beta's Bliss, book #2 of the Tales of the Tellurian Pack! I really love how this turned out, especially the purple tones! I see a lot of romance books using black and red, so I wanted to do something a little different. The purple and gold gives it more of that spooky/paranormal vibe, which I really love. And of course, hot guys plus moon equals shifter romance. Duh. Preorders are rolling in for the book, which is amazing! I'm so glad people are excited about this series. I'm a bit over 16000 words into this book and it's turning out a little bit different than the previous one. Instead of a murder mystery like the last book, this one centers around Leo who is trying to balance a ridiculous amount of stuff all at once. Meanwhile he's struggling with the fact that he's attracted to a guy for the first time in his life and the guy in question is great, bu