Zetta Hunt

  I have exciting news. Or at least I think it is. I finally have a series underway. So far, the first story is drafted, and I’m heading into the final round of edits. The second story is coming together. As of now, this will be a four-book series. I have tentatively titled this series: Wedding Troubles. These will be stand alone stories that revolve around a wedding theme. The title of the series is subject to change, but as of now it is the best I can come up with, and I feel it fits the stories I’m writing. The first story is titled, The Worst Man . You know, instead of the best man in the wedding, this guy, according to the heroine, is the worst man. Still keeping a play on words for weddings, the second story will be titled, The Maid of Dishonor . I don’t yet have definite titles for stories 3 and 4, but I’ve been noodling things for those stories as well.   I’ve been putting a lot of work into these stories, and that’s why there has been little activity on here as o...

This past week has been too hot for words. No, wait, I’m a writer, I could give all kinds of words do describe it. But it’s really too hot and I'm too lazy to bother. I swear I’m turning into an old curmudgeon. This past winter I moaned and complained about the cold, but now I’m not happy with the heat. Next thing I know I’ll be yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Except, there are no kids where I live, so I shall stay young until then and put forth an effort to stop complaining about the weather. 😎 On that note, and despite the heat, I have been hard at work. I have finally gotten started on a few of the things I mentioned in my last post but haven’t implemented anything yet, but I’m getting there. The most important thing right now is I’m working on a story that is pretty far along. Even better, this story is going to be part of a themed series. The first story is shaping up great and I have notes for the second story and have an inkling of ideas for two more. They will all be ...

  I’m sure I’ve mentioned on here before my desire to write a series. My first two stories were part of a series, but I didn’t get past two books in The Office After Hours . I suppose I could write another story in that series. That thought occurred to me recently. My next series, Holiday Wishes , only had two stories in it until this past December when I finally wrote the third story for that series. I came up with the brilliant idea to write a winter themed series. Because, you know, it’s winter. I’m a seasonal person. I don’t know why this is, or how I became this way, or if I was just born for the seasons. When it is winter, I want to read things set in winter. I’ve read plenty of romances with winter themes during the winter months. When it’s summer, I want to read something with more of a summer theme. I’ve read Treasure Island in the summer more than once. While I was writing Faking it at Christmas , I decided I would do a series of winter stories next. I wanted to keep the ...

This is the first story that I’ve published that resulted from a writing prompt. So I thought I’d write a post about how this story came to be, in case it is of interest to others. I guess this is sort of a behind-the-scenes type thing like they do with movies and TV shows. When I’d finished drafting Beach Fling with the Biker , I wasn’t sure what I was going to tackle next. I needed something to keep me productive, so I wasn’t six months or more between releases again. I have used the editor on the Reedsy website for the past few stories to format my manuscripts into ePub to upload to Amazon. It made that part of the process quicker and easier for me. One day when I was on their site, I noticed they had a thing called a Plot Generator. So I thought I would indulge in a bit of creative procrastination to see what it did. A Writing Prompt to Get Me Going First off, their Plot Generator is not some AI thing. As of now, I’m staying away from AI for my creative writing. There is far too m...

Whao! Would you look at this, a cover reveal. Obviously I've been working on another story. The title is Guard My Body. It's about a hot protective bodyguard and a writer. Because who doesn't want a hot bodyguard as a book-boyfriend? Writing this story has been a lot of fun, I'm about to enter the final stages of it and hope to have this story out by the end of this month. When I was finishing up Beach Fling with a Biker I wasn't sure what I was going to write next. The past few stories I've used the Reedsy editor to format my manuscripts to upload to Amazon. It has saved me a lot of time with formatting. I noticed on the Reedsy site they have a plot generator. So I decided to check it out. It spit out an idea about a bodyguard, which intrigued me, but I also dismissed it. However, the concept wouldn't leave me alone, so I went back and started generating plots involving a bodyguard as my hero. And no, their little plot generator is not some AI thing. From...

  I like blogs. I read several almost daily. Most of the ones I read are by authors, but I read other kinds of blogs as well. Some blogs have helped me. For example, when I decided knitting a pair of socks was a great idea, I found a blog to help me figure out the stitches for the heel of the sock. Or when I decided to dual boot my laptop with Linux, while retaining Windows. Although, I'm not sure why, I've never really logged into my Windows partition. Oh well. The point is the info on a blog was there to help me. As some of you know I'm not big on social media. I've never understood Facebook and honestly, I'm not sure I ever will. To some extent I do, but mostly I don't. I feel like everybody is shouting, "Hey, look at me, and here's my views on this and that, today I'm upset at this other thing, and oh by the way this is what I had for breakfast with photos." I can live my life without that madness. Once upon a time, I did try to be active o...

  Thought I'd share my cover for my up coming story - Snowed In With My Crush. I'm putting the finishing touches on the story and should have it out in a few days as long as life doesn't get in the way. A snowed in story this close to Spring was not my intention, but life happens. At least I'll have this story finished at long last. After I get this story published, I have other things in the works. However, some of that has taken a back seat at the moment as I'm determined to get this story finished and out for you to enjoy. So stay tuned!  

If you have read my last post , you know I contracted Lyme Disease, which has made me eternally tired. If you read the post before that, you know that I’d started a new story. Except, being sick caused progress to stop on the story. Which was a bummer. The story takes place at the beach. I love going to the beach. I enjoy listening to the waves hit the shore, the cries of the seagulls and people laughing and having a good time while I sit in the sand watching said waves, seagulls, and people. The reason I love it so much is probably because I don’t live close to any beaches. The closest I’ve got is Lake Erie, and even that is a bit of a hike to get to. Also, if you read my post ‘Pushing Forward-More Stories in the Works’ then you know that after trying to make notes and do an outline of a story, that I finally gave up and just started writing the story with no pre-planning. I was having great fun with it. Then I became dead tired again to the point I didn’t have the energy to do much...

I'm getting closer and closer to releasing another story. The cover is finished so I thought I would share it with you.   I don't have the blurb written, yet. But this is a 'one night leads to more' type story. I'm hard at work at edits on this story, so with any luck I'll have it out soon. If all goes well I hope to have it out later this week or sometimes next week at the latest. I hate to say for sure, because I fear if I gave a specific date, something in my life would blow up and I wouldn't get it out in time. This is why I have yet to do any pre-orders so far. I'm working at getting more organized so hopefully this will change in the near future. In Other News Speaking of getting organized, I am really working hard at that right now. I want to get several more stories written before the end of the year and I'm putting my all into this once again. So there should be much more activity going on around here. I'm also getting together plans for...

I had hoped to get a new story out last month, but obviously that didn't happen. But I'm still working on it, so my plan is to get it out this month. The story is coming along, but needs more work. Actually, I'm trying to put a plan together to get more stories written and out in the near future. In the meantime why not check out Her Holiday Fireworks. Yes, this is me doing a shameless plug for one of my stories. Something I don't do often. But if you haven't read it already you can find it on Amazon for $.99 or free in Kindle Unlimited. So if you want a steamy read check it out.  I hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July.  WILL THEY GET FIREWORKS THIS FOURTH OF JULY OR JUST ANOTHER DUD? Lindsey I hated working holidays. I wanted to be out having a good time with everyone else, not serving up coffee on a hot July day. But when Gavin comes in and invites me to his place to watch the fireworks, I worry that instead of seeing sparks fly, I'll just end up...

  I’m happy to report I’m well underway on a new story. It took me long enough. I tried to get one out before this, but things just didn’t work out that way. I knew if I didn’t get down to work on something, before long, another year (or two) would pass with nothing published. I didn’t want that to happen again. The problem lies in my process. I often tangle myself up trying to figure out the best way to approach a story. There are times I want to do a full outline of a story, other times I just want to dive in and see where I end up. More often than not, I start out strong with either approach, then somehow problems set in. Before I know it, I’m abandoning whatever it was I was working on and moving on to something else. It becomes an endless cycle. The only way I break out of this is to make myself sit down and dig in with determination. That’s where I’m at right now. Usually, it’s a middle road I end up traveling on. I do some back story on my characters, then write up a very br...

Old habits die hard, says the old cliche. Like most cliches, there is always truth in it. This last winter I did pretty good. I started blogging again; I wrote and released a new short romance story. At last! I’m on track. . . until I wasn’t. The writing began not to go well, again. I decided that if I updated the look and feel of this blog, it would spur me into action. Now it is April and my last post was in January. Obviously, it didn’t work out too well for me. Day by day, I realized I was slipping back down into the old habits I so desperately wanted to get away from. Old habits die hard. Trying to pull myself back up, I visited this site. The design changes had seemed elegant and refined at the time I did them. Before I finished all of it, I wondered on to other things. The poor blog forgotten, again. Now the design seems cold, almost dark somehow, mostly lifeless. Maybe I should do some more changes? Or is this me procrastinating again? Maybe. Or maybe it’s me trying to rekindle...

  I’ve got a rough draft of a new story finished. Now comes the fun part of trying to make it better. And it is fun, or at least I think it is. I’m also getting back to posting here regularly. I enjoy writing these posts. Don’t know if they're actually interesting to others, but it’s out there just in case someone somewhere wants to read all my ramblings. Some days I think about challenging myself and see if I could post daily for a set length of time. Although I’m not sure if I could find that much to say. I guess I won’t know till I try, but for now, I’m more about finding focus. There are many reasons I’ve suddenly reappeared after some time away. One thing is I live with and take care of an elderly family member at the moment. That has become stress city in the past few months. Writing helps soothe that stress away. At least for a short time. The other thing is I enjoy doing this, even though I feel like I’m struggling with everything. Sometimes I struggle to get words down. Wr...

  I’ve always wanted to outline a novel. I have books that present outlining systems for writers. These books attract me like bug-lights attract bugs. Unfortunately, my fate ends up being like those poor bugs flying toward the light and their doom. I think the reason I’m attracted to an in-depth outlining system is they promise a straightforward way to produce a great novel. These books break the entire writing process down into a neat and easy process. They also try to debunk the myths that outlining your story ahead of time will kill your creativity for the project. Maybe for some writer’s this is true. But as I’m finding out, not all of us. I did rough outlines for the last three stories I published. When I say rough, I mean a short sketch fit into a brief structure. And those stories have far exceeded my expectations, meaning more than one person actually read them. So I thought, alright, I must be an outliner after all. So I dove into one of these books on outlining. I came up...

So I thought I’d take some time to give you all a writing update. First off, I’m hard at work on my next story and with luck it’ll be out before the end of the month. At least that’s the goal right now. Second off, I’m slightly changing directions somewhat. I really enjoyed writing the two Christmas stories I put out in December. I was ambitious and actually had four stories planned. But by the time I finished The Gift of Holly, I realized there was no way I was going to get two more stories out and get ready for Christmas at the same time. Especially since I’d done nothing, and I mean nothing, to get ready for the holidays. But, as of now, I still plan on writing those other two stories and releasing them for the 2021 Christmas season. As I warned in a previous post (if you’ve been following along) they were not my usual steamy stuff. Originally, I meant for them to be, but they turned out the way they turned out. Not only did I have a great time writing them, but I was in shock when ...

So my last post I talked about how it felt like my idea well had gone dry. After I wrote that post, I got to work and discovered an idea I’m jazzed about. So I’m back to work on another story. Two days after that I was sorting through some clutter and I came across the July/August 2018 issue of Writer’s Digest that featured an interview with George Saunders. I couldn't remember if I’d read that interview or not. So I took the time to read it. (This is why I never get any cleaning done.) In the interview he talked about being wary of outlines and how he tried to know as little as possible (about the story) at every step, so you’re open to the actual energy coming off the page. Well, gee, where was this advice two weeks ago when I needed it? I mean seriously, here is a guy who’s won a Man Booker Prize, and he starts out knowing as little as possible. Here I am, a producer of smut, trying to brainstorm as much as I can before I start. Yes, yes, I noticed the difference too. I’m not o...

It’s out there, my first self-published sexy story. After waging all out war on self-doubt, fear of failure and all those other nasty things, I finished my story and hit publish on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning, my story was live on Amazon. So I got busy and set up my Author Central page, did a blog post that the book was live, spread the news to the very few people that knew I was doing this, and got to work on my next story. I also set up my Goodreads author page. It’s been a whirlwind of activity. But now that I have everything set up (at least I hope I do!) I can get back to the most important part of all of this, the writing. What Surprised Me Most I really suffer from self-doubt and some unfounded fear about my work. I thought I would hesitate about hitting that publish button on Amazon. But I think I stayed so busy Saturday, that by the time I was ready to hit publish, I was too exhausted to feel much of anything. I’d spent the entire day researching keywords, doing anoth...

I’m hard at work putting the finishing touches on my first story. Some days I feel like I will never get there. All I can say is those books on writing and self-publishing short erotica and short romance make it look way easier than this. I’m sure part of it is my own insecurities. Well, okay, that’s probably most of it to be honest. When I decided to do this, I read several how -to books on writing and self-publishing short erotica/short romance. Basically, in a nutshell, what they said was that you could write a story in 2 or 3 days, then make a cover, upload it to Amazon and/or other retailers and Bam! You’re on your way to building a smut empire. Easy peasy . I’m here to tell you a few things. First off, I can write a story in 2 or 3 days, no problem. However, revision and edits take me more than 2 or 3 days. At least it is for this first story. I’ve had to do a complete rewrite of it. Did it help? Heck yeah, it did. But it took time. I did a lot of edits first...

I love to write. But writing is rewriting and I don’t love that as much. Others take great joy in rewriting, but not me. I take great joy in the creating. To me nothing is better than getting an idea and typing away in the heat of passionate creation. That’s where I find my joy. I’m working at rewrites and edits for the first story I plan on publishing. Except, my other failing is I’m a perfectionist, at least with my writing. I never thought I was. I mean, I’m often untidy in my surroundings and with many other things in life. I often say “good enough” and move on. It’s not like that with my writing, and it was only recently that I discovered this. I had a friend that retired from being an Art Director at a big New York City advertising firm. I remember him saying, “Isn’t it amazing how many people go over the same piece of writing and still errors get through.” He’s right. This happens. Just look at books published by major publishers. Often I see reader reviews com...