The CreativeLife update, the 100 day project, and some shameless promo ;)

Hello there!

I don't know if this happens to you, but once a new year gets going, life seems to fall back into its usual routines. Routine is not a bad thing, don't get me wrong, but I don't like being bored. It is the primary reason I am self-employed - I can say no to work or negotiate a deadline if I am too busy to take on new work. Another reason I decided to go back into self-employment was to spend more time being creative. Enter the 100 day project.

I tried it in 2024 and could barely make it to day 10 without giving up. It took some soul searching to discover why since I was making tiny paintings. Creative, for sure, and I should have been able to continue doing that for the following 90 days. The plan had been to make 100 tiny paintings. I eventually realised that I got bored. Doing 100 of the same thing definitely did not work for me. But I really wanted to try again, so I had to come up with a new idea. Will it work? I have no idea, but it is a better plan than what I had in mind last year.

The plan (and how it fits into my 2025 goals)

I mentioned the group challenges I plan to participate in and the projects I design for my art group in my previous post. I have also mentioned the novel currently with my editor. Knowing how my workload is expanding, I can hardly find the time to add yet another challenge to my day. Unless I think outside the box.

The 100 day project is not just about art, or craft, or even a single project. It is about being creative on a daily basis. So here is the plan for my 100 day project: I am going to draw, paint, write, or make something every day. It won't be the same every day.

I might do a project that will take several days or even weeks, but I will also do small things in between. This way, I won't get bored but still manage to do something creative every day for a hundred days.

Practically, I need to plan time to create every day. I have mentioned that my art group meets once a week for two hours, so that will continue to be the schedule for Thursdays. The rest of the week is not as easy. But I am committing to spend at least 30 minutes every day to create something. If I don't have 30 minutes, then 10 minutes will have to do.

The commitment (and my accountability tracker)

Habit trackers abound on social media in various shapes and forms. I also have one in my Bullet Journal for tracking my daily goals.

I thought I would use that, but I am inclined to think that a separate tracker would be more useful. Instead of just ticking off that I have achieved the objective for the day, I will add the time I spent to it. This way, I can see which days I have more time, which will be helpful for planning future art competition paintings or doing commissions.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect plan, with life throwing curve balls just as you think everything is under control. But a daily practice and some useful data will not go to waste even if life interferes.

============================

Some of my books, will be promoted as part of a special sale on @Smashwords to celebrate Read an Ebook Week 2025 from March 2-8. Be sure to follow me for more updates and links to the promotion for my books and many more! #ebookweek25 #Smashwords

============================

  

The challenge details

The 100 day challenge starts today. You can still join and find all the details and the social media sharing here.

I doubt that I will share every day. I don't like social media that much, but look out for my posts on Instagram with the tags #dothe100dayproject and @dothe100dayproject.

This is only a partial CreativeLife update. I will share my progress on the rest of my goals in my next post. Don't forget to check out the Smashwords sale coming next week.

Stay creative - until next time!

💜Linzé

VAMPIRE ROMANCE SEASON 12 Dec - 1 Jan

Snuggle up to a sexy vampire

VAMPIRE ROMANCE SEASON 12 Dec - 1 Jan

Jarod and Wolfe find their soulmates amidst the challenges of vampire royal life.

Find PRIME PREY and PRIME PLEDGE at 75% off during the end of the year!

PRIME PLEDGE by Linzé Brandon (Book 8 in the Nations of Peace series)

PreSALE offer - get the book BEFORE its release on 1 December 2024! 

Wolfgang Hauer is not just a businessman, he is the Prime Alpha, prince of the vampires. Like all the males he craves the relationship with his soul-mate. Cursed into blindness by a vindictive lover, he is deprived of the chance to see the tiny flame in the eyes of the woman who would fulfil that craving. Until he meets Isabeau, whom he knew was going to change everything ... including his future.

Isabeau D'Amour is the epitome of beauty with her long, curly black hair, flawless skin and deep green eyes. But she has the brains of a brilliant engineer and researcher in the field of medical robotics. And yet underneath all the beauty and brains hides her true nature: she is a ritual healer, Karri'anah. Revered by the vampire clans for her abilities, she is cursed by her bloodline. She needs to be loved to be beautiful.

Meeting Wolfe stirred emotions inside her heart that she didn't know was possible. But when she learned of his curse, how could they possibly get involved if she wasn't his soul-mate and then deny him the chance to meet the woman he craved?

Sinister forces threaten their lives and family disputes are not helping them figure out if there was a future for them. But Isabeau quickly learned that Wolfe wasn't someone who took those threats lightly as he rallied his cousins around him to actively search out and take the threats head-on.

Prince or not, Wolfe was not going to let his chance at happiness slip through his hands. He would make sure that people understood that being Prime Alpha was not about being royalty, it was about responsibility, and protecting his people and his soul-mate, no matter the cost.

PRIME PLEDGE is available from these online retailers:

Smashwords Apple Books Barnes and Noble

Everand Gardners Kobo Books

Take a look at the rest of the series here

BOOK FEATURE: The Medusa Psalms by Kyle Toucher

     This book is a collection of 10 stories and 2 novellas, taking place within, or tangential to, Walpurgis County, a place benighted by fallen angles and old curses, pockets of time dilation, and a sinister cult fixated on the end of all things. Overlooking the entire place broods Walpurgis Peak, a snarling ogre of a mountain, beneath which a comatose entity convalesces, kept alive by a colossal bio-mechanical atrocity, known only as The Machine.

     Connected by events and recurring characters, whether taking place in the 19th, 20th, or 21st centuries, the history and lore of Walpurgis County revealed through the stories of those who lived it.  Exorcisms and scarecrows. A wicked mountain and an unaging house. Disintegrating family and a lonely motel. Demons and monsters. Alternative history and the end of all things. Methamphetamine and Slayer.

👉👉  BOOK TRAILER  👈👈

🔖Get the book on Amazon here

Excerpt from 'Billy Beauchamp and the Monster Cartel'

Scarlet, leaning to accommodate Fate, gazed up at me. The twins wore a plain white dress of mismatched sizes, no shoes, and a garland of flowers arranged in each mane. Scarlet, the pagan maiden eager to plunge into the volcano. The look in her eye told me she had resigned herself to that day and had not that sacrifice spelled doom for her younger sister, I felt she would have acted on it there and then.

I felt sorrow for her. Though so pure and unafraid, I saw a future in service to monsters as they feasted on tentacles, traumatized children, and walked the endless line between desolation and damnation.

The conjoined sisters turned away and joined hands with the others. Six girls formed a perimeter around the magic weave. A freakish sight by any measure, but it would be a crude disservice to refer to these young ladies as freaks. In the Purg, bones fused in ways not seen, bloodlines ran long and true. Haunted and hunted had found refuge here, despite the bloody knife of Walpurgis Peak and the terrible events shat upon its slopes.

“Pneuma,” said the tallest of them, Destiny I believe. Her twin, Candi, half her size and nearly half her age, repeated the word in a whisper.

“Haima,” said another.

“Mystiko,” said a third.

The last time I heard Greek, Lena and I were in a restaurant in Studio City, and she had to order for us because I was about four Ouzos into a future DUI. But in the presence of Penny Brynnwick’s daughters, their words were clearly understood: Breath. Blood. Secret.

One second the magic circle was an ugly nightmare of lines and symbols―the next, an icy extrusion of light burst from those same lines. Shadows splashed throughout the Grand Room, and somewhere in the hollows of my heart, I knew if I stared at this shadow theatre long enough, I’d catch a glimpse of what waited out there, in the Elsewhere, that place of abandonment The Proprietor lamented over, the place where the monsters were left behind.

The temperature dropped. Serpents of frigid air slithered through the Grand Room. In their linen dresses and bare shoulders, these barefoot girls made me feel like a coward for shivering in my long sleeves, jeans, boots, and leather vest. Their hair, caught in the gale, sought the center of the conjuring rug.

🔖Get the book on Amazon here

About the Author: Kyle Toucher

Kyle Toucher is the author of the novel Live Wire, from Crystal Lake Entertainment, the novella Life Returns, and the Black Hare Press release, Southpaw.

He recently appeared in the anthologies Dead Letters: Episodes of Epistolary Horror and To Hell and Back, from Crystal Lake and Hellbound Books respectively.

This September, expect his first collection The Medusa Psalms: Welcome to Walpurgis County ―also from Crystal Lake Entertainment―to rise from the slab of a coroner's office near you. Ten stories. Two novellas. One benighted landscape.

Chat to Kyle on social media

X: @kyletoucher

Instagram: @kyletoucher

Smashwords Summer/Winter sale - The Nations of Peace are on sale!

 The first seven Nations of Peace books are 50% off for the whole of July.

Series link to the sale books

Series link to the sale books

BOOK FEATURE: A Memory for Love by Linzé Brandon

 

A Memory for Love

"Their attraction brought heartbreak. Could their struggle for survival bring them back together?"

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1508808

Presale discount available at link.

Zarina sa'Der is not just an officer of the law, she is a category one memory witness, trained to work with the most vulnerable victims of violent crimes.

   Her last court case left her with nightmares which requires her to take a break to focus on clearing her special memory banks before she goes insane. As a Treasure of the Magicians' Order, the Grandmaster arranges that she can take her vacation at the High Order retreat for the ideal peace and quiet she needs.

   It has been three suns since Aidan Crea lost his mate and youngest daughter in the Wa'raki war that devastated Xa'an. When his best friend accuses him of becoming a grump, he agrees to take a break before the Grandmaster orders him to. After some soul searching he realised that he needed to get back to living instead of purely existing after the loss he had suffered.

   Zarina and Aidan form an unusual friendship that soon grows into something deeper, until Aidan is tasked to protect her after a contract is given out to assassinate her. Although her job exposes her to the worst criminals of society, things take a turn for the worse, when they finally find out who is behind the attempts on her life.

   They find themselves pawns in a larger plot and they have to risk their hearts and their lives to finally get a chance at a happily ever after.

#adult #fiction #fantasy

BOOK FEATURE: Master of Rods and Strings by Jason Marc Harris

SYNOPSIS

 Jealous of the attention lavished upon the puppetry talents of his dear sister—and tormented by visions of her torture at the hands of the mysterious Uncle Pavan who recruited her for his arcane school—Elias is determined to learn the true nature of occult puppetry, no matter the hideous costs, in order to exact vengeance.

BUY LINKS  ->  Crystal Lake Publishing     Amazon

EXCERPT

I will not deny that I have always been fascinated with puppets.

Perhaps because I was born on a farm in Saint Siméon, a forgotten town west of Valence in southern France named after the patron saint of puppets. Despite the frequent puppet shows many families considered themselves extraordinarily lucky if a child were accepted into the Lycée Avancé des Marionettes to study such puppetry—not all were enthusiastic.

Neither my father, Patrick Clermont, nor my mother, Anne Belleau, ever bought me a puppet.

I sulked over this injustice. At the age of four, I could only watch my sister, Sonja, play with Angélique, a fairy marionette with long red hair that our Uncle Pavan had bought her.

Occasionally, when she noticed me moping, Sonja would let me pull at the strings. Although I could get Angélique to do a flopping walk, I never could make her glide so gracefully as my sister did. Sonja’s twirling flourishes of thumbs and rippling fingers gave Angélique life.

“Such talent, such polish.” Uncle Pavan rubbed his large thumbs together as he watched Angélique slide amid potted wisteria and marigolds in the garden, flow through the open patio door, and float inside up to the doll’s house to join Sonja.

Sonja played at Angélique’s strings like a harp by whose invisible sounds the marionette bobbed with buoyant grace, almost hovering at times as if her silky azure wings could truly fly.

Uncle Pavan’s own prowess at puppetry was marvelous. Some townsfolk whispered he could literally bring puppets to life. He took a dedicated interest in Sonja’s future. That is why I have so few memories of her. She left for the advanced arts of puppetry.

I was left alone.

I longed to play with Sonja as we had on brighter days of jumping on piles of bronzing autumn leaves or racing through lavender fields with the spring winds—chasing harvest mice and Swallowtail butterflies dipping amid the yellow cowslips. We’d jump and then crouch down between stalks of shuddering wheat or corn. When I brooded and stroked Sebastian, our silky-furred black cat, who had also been the playmate of Sonja, I decided that if I showed myself particularly adept at puppets like my sister, then I would be reunited with her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jason Marc Harris teaches creative writing, folklore, and literature, and is the Creative Writing Coordinator at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX.

He graduated with a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Washington, and an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University, where he served as Fiction Editor of Mid-American Review.

Creative work in journals such as Apex and Abyss, Arroyo Literary Review, Marvels and Tales, Midwestern Gothic, Psychopomp Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and Writing Texas

His novella of weird horror Master of Rods and Strings was included in the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award® Reading List for 2021 and will be republished by Crystal Lake Publishing in 2024.

Find the author online at his website: https://jasonmarcharris.com/

Book Feature: DEAD LETTERS: EPISODES OF EPISTOLARY HORROR edited by Jacob Steven Mohr

DEAD LETTERS: EPISODES OF EPISTOLARY HORROR features 21 all-original stories from authors like Ai Jiang, Gordon B. White, and Gemma Files, all in epistolary format. That means: stories told in emails, letters, texts, podcast transcripts, and the like.

BUY LINK

SYNOPSIS

A video game walkthrough harbors a sinister secret. A grieving sister’s letters cross the barrier between alive and dead (and alive again). A chain of frightening emails is the only evidence a young woman ever existed. And a series of journals follow a dwindling wagon train marching straight into Hell—or someplace worse.

Haunted podcast transcripts. Blood soaked police reports. Bewildering court findings.

Brace yourself for Dead Letters, an anthology that resurrects the chilling power of epistolary fiction—where ordinary documents become hidden records of our darkest fantasies and bleakest nightmares.

Across 21 all-original tales from talents like Gemma Files, Ai Jiang, Gordon B. White, J.A.W. McCarthy, and Red Lagoe, and curated with precision by Jacob Steven Mohr, Dead Letters: Episodes of Epistolary Horror serves up a prolonged sojourn into the macabre—and promises to haunt your sleepless nights.

EXCERPT (from "The Parthas UFO Incident" by T.T. Madden")

Dear scientists,

At first we thought it to be nothing more than a prank. Children from around town would mention something in the sky, a dark shape moving through the night. There have been strange things out in the desert, and even so, we thought little of it. 
 
And then they started mentioning the men. Some people may think we’re hicks, living out here in the desert, but there’s no place in the world where parents won’t pay attention when their children say a strange man tried to talk to them.

The paper has pictures of all of them, what they arrived in and the men themselves. It looks like a pyramid hovering in the sky. Like an invisible hand lifting one of those Ancient Egyptian structures, except this one is all black. Black as the night. 

The pictures of the men are different. There’s always two of them, and they’re always together. People say they see them out in the desert think they’re lost hikers, a duo who always disappear when people get close. At first, some of us were starting to think a new urban legend was happening right before our eyes. Like the ghost girl who leaves her sweater in your car.

But then something turned.

For the past several weeks, this presence around Parthas has menaced us. I do not know what caused their attitudes to change. Perhaps it was the fireworks. Perhaps they interpreted them as an attack. Since the Fourth of July, the number of car crashes and abandoned vehicles on the highway has gone up exponentially. People driving along the highway say the shapes in the sky follow them. Not engaging, just following. Watching. They say they pass the two men over and over again, standing on the shoulder, eternal hitchhikers begging for a ride that’s never coming.

I know what you must think, that I’m just repeating stories I’ve heard. That people out here in the middle of the desert have nothing better to do than spin tales. No. I’ve seen these things myself, the pyramids and the men, lurking in the sky, in the desert, just outside the trailer park. Always at night. Like they’re waiting for something. Some signal for them to finally come in.

This is the Nevada desert. There is so, so much open sky. There’s no place they can’t see us.

Please. Please send someone.

EDITOR BIO

Jacob Steven Mohr does not believe in human consciousness; his works emerge as though from the ether, fully formed and fully ominous.

Selections of these can be observed in Cosmic Horror Monthly, Shortwave Magazine, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, Weird Horror Magazine, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 15.

He exists in Columbus OH.

Follow him everywhere @jacobstevenmohr

Book Feature: PRIME PREY - The Protectors by Linzé Brandon (Book 6 in the Nations of Peace series)

Buy link

=>

Click the cover!

=>

EXCERPT (from Chapter 3)

If you become pregnant, will you allow me to provide for the child?

She felt her eyes widen. The tone of his voice, even in her mind, was pleading. She tilted her head sideways as she thought about this. Did he want a baby? In her experience with friends and family, human or otherwise, the males were not usually the ones who wanted children.

Are you serious?

He nodded. In any way you need. Money included.

She frowned slightly as they got out of the cooling water. She wasn’t exactly poor, but babies had more needs than she might be prepared for. She rubbed her forehead for a moment. Was she considering having this man’s baby?

She lifted her eyes back to his. He was deadly serious. Not only did she see it in his eyes, but she also felt it in his mind. He was promised to another woman, but he would not relinquish his responsibilities. On some level, she was sure he wanted her to have his baby. It made no sense. They had barely been introduced, to say nothing of knowing each other. How could he know what kind of mother she would be? To his child, no less. Shivering from a sudden chill, she felt him take the towel and wrap it securely around her before carrying her back to bed.

If it wasn’t that her thoughts were otherwise occupied, she would have protested; she did have a perfectly working pair of legs, after all.

“If there is a baby,” she started quietly as he lay beside her, holding her close, “I will tell you, and then we can decide what to do.”

“Thank you,” he replied.

He watched her drift to sleep and looked at his timepiece. He had to leave. It was not how he had planned to spend the first day with his soul-mate, but he had no choice. Prince Wolfgang was scheduled to travel to Zo’en today on family business, and he had to accompany him, being his chief bodyguard and his oldest cousin. Wolfe, as he preferred to be called, trusted very few people with his security, and Jarod was the only one he allowed to travel with him on family business.

Loathe to wake her, but he would feel like a jerk to just leave without at least saying goodbye. He got dressed and then gently shook her awake.

“It’s time,” he said when she opened her eyes and looked at him.

“I have a solar address, so you can reach me anywhere, anytime. I saved it in your contact list on your handheld.” He held up the tiny hand-sized computer he had found on her bedside table.

He touched her cheek one more time, running his thumb over her lips. “Will you be all right?”

She tried to smile but gave up. This was all they had or were going to be. Slowly sitting up, clutching the towel as a shield to her chest, she nodded. “I will be just fine.”

The sudden wariness in her eyes told him that lingering would not make it better. “Remember. Any time. Anything,” he said, with a last tender kiss on her cheek. He got to his feet and left the room. A few moments later, she heard the front door close quietly. He had obviously walked here since she didn’t hear a vehicle.

Lying back against her pillows, she wondered if they had been insane to do this when they both knew there could never be any future for them.

Lying in bed all day would not solve or change anything, so she got up and went to her closet to pick something to wear. The inside of the door had a full-length mirror, and a slight shimmer on her chest caught her eye.

Turning to fully face the mirror, she dropped the towel. She ran her hand quickly over her skin, removing the magic glamour hiding her body markings. Born from a Hunter and a Life-Giver, her body markings reflected both bloodlines. Then she frowned.

“Oh, shit.”

-----------------

About Linzé Brandon

Linzé Brandon is the pen name of Lizette de Vries-Venter. She is a self-employed consultant and specialist engineer, author and artist. Living a creative life is what makes her happy and she loves to share her knowledge in both art and engineering.

She does, however, leave the teaching of story writing to others.

Linzé is the author of fiction and non-fiction books.

Book Feature: NEVER WAKE: An Anthology of Dream Horror

Where do we go when we dream?

  Since the beginning of time, people have argued the meaning of dreams. Are they symbolic visions that hold great meaning and personal significance? Are they portals into other worlds? Or are they just a series of random events our mind shows us when we fall asleep? Whatever the case, this much is true—the mind can be a scary place to venture, even for a few hours.

  NEVER WAKE is an anthology of dream horror, bringing you several mind-bending tales of nightmares, hallucinations, and phantasmagoria from some of the hottest talent in horror fiction. But don’t worry—when you (wake up screaming) flip the last page, just remember to tell yourself, “It was only just a story…”

  Unless it wasn’t.

  Featuring an introduction from Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann and stories from: Cynthia Pelayo, Philip Fracassi, Gwendolyn Kiste, Eric LaRocca, Lee Murray, Todd Keisling, Laurel Hightower, and many more!

Buy link: https://getbook.at/NeverWake

An excerpt from the anthology, from Philip Fracassi's story, "Specter."

  The book is large, almost like a dictionary. The cover is black leather, and there’s no title. No words at all. There are designs, however, carved into the leather. Intricate, beautiful designs: a pair of large hands holding sand that spills between cupped fingers; a snake eating its own tail; a large, closed eye in the center; stars, moons, planets…

  Jenna lifts the cover to reveal a neat inscription written in the center of the first, blank, page.

For Jenna,

When you dream, dream of me.

Nana

  “It’s beautiful,” Jenna says, part of her wanting to leaf through the book then and there, feel the thick pages within, read the different meanings of dream symbols…
  But her friends are already standing, antsy and ready for the cake and ice cream portion of the event. The final meal before the party is officially over and they can go home to daydream about their own childhood birthday parties, the wonderful gifts they’ll hope to receive.
  Jenna carefully sets the book back into the sturdy black box, her eyes unable to leave the cover.
  “Jenna?” her mother says. “Come on, let’s blow out the candles.”
  “Okay,” she replies, and begins to fold the thin tissue paper back over the book’s cover, when she pauses. 
  The embossed eye in the center—the one she would have sworn was closed only a moment ago—is now open wide. As if watching her.
  As if seeing her for the very first time.
  Realizing she must have seen it wrong the first time, Jenna dismisses the chill that climbs up her spine at the sight of the open eye. She dutifully covers it with the paper, replaces the cardboard lid, then heads for the kitchen to have cake and ice cream with her friends.
  She doesn’t notice Nana watching her as she passes by the table, a rare smile curling the old woman’s lips.

Buy link: https://getbook.at/NeverWake

EDITOR BIOS:

 

Kenneth W. Cain is an author of horror and dark fiction, and a Splatterpunk Award nominated freelance editor. To date, he has had over one hundred short stories and thirteen novels/novellas, as well as a handful each of nonfiction pieces, books for children, and poems released by many great publishers such as Crystal Lake Publishing, JournalStone, and Cemetery Gates Media.

He has also edited eight anthologies, with two more coming in 2023. He lives in Chester County PA with his family and two furbabies, Butterbean and Bodhi. His full publishing history is available on his website at kennethwcain.com

 

Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He’s the author of more than fifteen novels, including Malignant Summer, The Switch House, Dead Daughters, Limbs, and many other titles. When he's not working on the next book, he's usually hanging out with his wife and son, shooting around on the basketball court, playing video games, or messing with a new screenplay.

He bleeds coffee and IPAs. You can learn more about his books at timmeyerwrites.com