Switch Blayde: Blog

The three Halloween contest winners are kept in the Premier section for a year. Well, the year is up and my entry is now in the free area if you want to read it.

It's called "Soulmates." I can't put the link in this blog because, if I do, it won't show up on SOL's home page. If you can't find the story, let me know.

Please note there are two stories with the same title. Mine, of course, is under the author name of Switch Blayde.

In light of the horrific elementary school shooting in Texas yesterday, I feel compelled to talk about my novel "High School Massacre."

The novel is a thriller. It's a murder mystery. And it begins with a massacre in a high school (hence the title), but it is not about the school shooting and it definitely does not glorify school shootings.

"High School Massacre" is the second novel in my Lincoln Steele series. Steele, the ex-Army Ranger/Special Ops private detective, seeks justice his own way, and that's what this novel is about. It's about discovering the truth and getting justice. The high school shooting is simply the inciting incident (a literary term for setting the plot's conflict in motion, or more simply, gets the story going).

The novel is available on both Bookapy and for free on SOL. Scenes, whether they be shootings or sex, are graphically described. That's how I write. I write what I call cinematically, where I try to bring the reader into the story as if they were watching a movie. It's my version of "show don't tell." I don't tell the reader a fight happened, I show the fight. So the first chapter may be difficult to read after the Texas shooting, but there are clues in it that are important because they come out later in the novel.

I wrote a short story for SOL's Halloween contest which just ended. I couldn't tell you before because the author is anonymous during the contest. The story, "Soulmates," finished in 3rd place. So for 6 months, it is only available in the Premier area. But after 6 months it will be moved to the free area.

So the story never showed up in the New Story area on the homepage. For those who didn't follow the contest and have a Premier membership, check out the story.

The novel I've been working on for well over a year is now published. It's on Bookapy at https://bookapy.com/s/418/lonely-war-widows.

"Lonely War Widows" is an erotic historical-fiction romance that takes place during World War II and a few years after. My novel "The Breeder" also takes place in the past (1880s), but that novel is not historical fiction. The only real event in that novel is mentioning the Irish land wars. Everything else is period based, but pure fiction. This new novel, "Lonely War Widows," has real historical people and events in it, although it is also fiction - hence Historical Fiction.

At 136,000 words, it's the longest novel I've written. Maybe because it spans more years than any other story of mine. And for those of you who didn't like the non-consensual sex and abuse in some of my other novels, this one is all consensual sex. There really isn't a bad guy like in my Lincoln Steele thrillers.

Now I need to figure out what I'm going to write next.

I've been posting the chapters for "High School Massacre" on Tuesdays (sometimes Monday or Wednesday when I was busy on Tuesday). But I got impatient and posted the final chapter of this novel last Friday.

For those who were expecting the posting today and didn't notice it on SOL or aren't a member in my group where I announce postings, I thought I should mention it here.