Clean Sweep has been published, a 5400 word Christmas story with a M/M pair in a contemporary setting.

Clean Sweep came from a Christmas prompt. When I first thought up the silly soot monster idea, I’d envisioned it as something humorous and sweet, but my mind seemed to be in serious mode so almost immediately I had Trey’s motivation to decorate become something a little less than cheery. Which made me sad. So I had to spend some time fixing his problem because I’m generally a sucker for happily ever afters.

The title is supposed to be a nod to both the soot monster’s physical destruction and the need for Trey and Kevin to do some serious cleaning up of the mess they’ve made of their relationship.

This is the last Sunday story I’m publishing this year and while not all of them have been the most amazing, stupendous work in the world, I’ve had a lot of fun and have been pretty satisfied with everything I’ve accomplished. When I set out in February to publish a short piece every week, I honestly worried that my goal would fall by the wayside because, you know…life.

Instead, I feel as if I’ve written, edited and learned more this year despite (or maybe because of) my promise to myself that I’m just having fun and I’m not allowed to constantly second guess or throw my work out simply because it might not be up to some impossibly high standard set by some random person on the interwebs. Putting my work out there on a consistent, constant schedule has actually been freeing, surprisingly. It’s relaxed me. Made me care less about what might or might not get said about any specific story and care more about focusing on the next project because that’s where I’m happiest.

It’s been an interesting year.

Next year might even be more so because I’ve decided to change things up a little. Instead of publishing a story every week on my website all year, I’m going to only be publishing the first Sunday of every month from now on. Nothing serialized because that would be far too long to wait for the next piece. I’m doing this so I can concentrate on my longer stories in order to hopefully build a bit of a backlist of available work. I don’t have specific monthly/weekly goals, but my plan is to publish ten novellas/novels over the course of the next year. Wish me luck!

I know it seems as if I’ve been on a M/M kick for the past couple of months. I got caught up trying to even things out since I spent so much time earlier this year working on M/F pieces. I promise I’m still writing M/F. Speaking of which…

Sunday, Jan 4th: New Year, Old Loves (fantasy, short story, M/F) – Sometimes a letter means exactly what it says. Sometimes you have to know a person well enough to read between the lines.