Rinda Elliott's Blog, page 2

We wanted to give the Unbreakable Bonds a new and updated look, so we worked with the talented Cate Ashwood to bring our beloved characters to life. Here they are! You can click on the books to go to Amazon, too. Are you ready to binge this complete series?

We absolutely fell in love with our four friends of the Unbreakable Bonds series and enjoyed writing their adventures. These books have action, explosions, duct tape, and of course, hot romance. If you’re new to the series, Shiver is currently on sale for just $.99! You can click on the cover to get your copy. Also, here is a handy reading order. We hope you have a blast and fall in love with our Lucas, Snow, Rowe, and Ian. Enjoy!

Rising Storm is out!

Rising Storm is a quick romp in my Thick as Thieves series, and it features Gareth Jones and Helix Rossington. 

I loved jumping back into that world and hope you enjoy their story. 

Here’s a bit about it:

Reformed thief Helix Rossington needs to find his little brother.

Finally free of the blackmailing monster who forced him into a life of crime, Helix is ready for a fresh start. A better life.

Unfortunately, making amends for past wrongs and locating his brother means stealing…again.

To make matters worse, he must work with ex-cop Gareth Jones. Not that the man is hard on the eyes, but he was in law enforcement and Helix doesn’t trust them.

Gareth has lost everything. But helping this band of reformed thieves promises to give him a new purpose in life.

If only he didn’t have to work with Helix. The man is hot as hell but a real pain in the ass. Still, his drive to find his lost brother has left Gareth wondering if he’d misjudged the man.

When this simple job goes wrong, Helix and Gareth are left clinging to each other, struggling to deal with new feelings neither thought possible. But are both men too damaged to take a chance on each other?

Rising Storm is the second book in the Thick As Thieves series and contains thieves seeking redemption, enemies to lovers, stealing antics, hot times, and a deep love neither man expected.

You can get your copy here!

Blind Warrior is out! We’re so excited for you to meet Grey and Cort. Here’s a little about the book. You can get it at getbook.at/BlindWarrior.

Grey Ackles

The Soul Weaver feels useless.

A burden endangering his brothers.

The last battle with the pestilents cost Grey his sight and powers.

Now he’s dependent on his vision rehabilitation therapist Cort to learn how to function on a daily basis.

But as he grows closer to Cort, Grey is left wanting his powers back for a new reason—how will he ever know if the man he’s falling for is actually his soul mate?

Cort Newton

There is some really weird stuff going on at that house.

Spell books, guns, and a giraffe in the backyard?

But no matter how strange it gets, Cort is not going to leave the grumpy writer.

Adjusting to sudden blindness is hard for everyone, but Grey clearly has deeper reason for needing his vision back at any cost. Cort just wished Grey would confide in him.

Even with Grey’s secrets, Cort has never been drawn to a man like he is with Grey and he will do anything to keep this man safe.

Blind Warrior is the third book in the Weavers Circle series. It includes fast-paced action, running through Savannah, secrets, shapeshifting, brainwashed assassins, a gorilla, sexy times, fun with water, insecurity, three crazy old ladies, and magic!

I have let this site go! In fact, it updated and is a little messed up, so it needs a complete revamp. You can usually find me on Facebook and also at drakeandelliott.com. I’m currently writing MM romance, but I’m also working on an MF urban fantasy. I love both! (Okay, and MMF romances, since I have a few of those out, too.)

My latest book is the second in the Weavers Circle series I write with Jocelynn Drake. You can find it at getbook.at/WildWarrior. It’s a fun, magical romp featuring Baer and Wiley.

Sometimes you have to dump a book if the plot isn’t right. I just had to do that. Thirty thousand words down the drain. But my new plot is better and tighter and I love it more, so it was worth it. But damn, getting rid of all that work is hard.

Jocelynn and I have done this a couple of times. When the story isn’t good enough, your gut gives you hints. When we realize it’s not right, we’ve started over. We end up having better books because of it.

There’s a trick to having two writers put forth a vision of their story. Luckily, Jocelynn and I have similar story instincts, so we’re able to work through our issues. And we do have them, have different ideas on how a character would react to a situation. We just work through it and find a compromise. And honestly, we usually end up in agreement.

I truly enjoy working with a partner on books because I don’t always trust my own story instincts but funny enough, when something is usually niggling the back of my mind, Jocelynn will point that part out. And vice versa. Our partnership works both ways.

When we started Shiver, we had no idea we’d still be writing books together years later, but here weare. And we have more ideas to come. There are still a few more books in Ward Security and one more in Unbreakable Bonds. Even Pineapple Grove has a couple more books. Next up for us is All for Wesley, book two in our Pineapple Grove series. We’re hard at work on it now. The cover is in finals, so we should have that for you soon. We’re excited about Wesley and Nathan’s story and hope you love it.

And don’t forget that we have our recent release, Ignite, out now. Click here to read more about it.

I’m going to try using my website a little more. I pay for the damn thing, so I might as well. LOL. Most of the time, you can find me on Facebook–especially in our reader’s group, Unbreakable Readers. Other than, that I’m more than likely off writing. Jocelynn Drake and I have a hectic schedule of exciting books planned this year. Right now, Fracture comes out March 29th and we’re hard at work on the next in our Ward Security Series. This one is full of action, intrigue and hot sex! Our favorite type of book!

Blackmail turned Lane Becker into a thief at the age of fourteen.

After ten miserable years, he’s finally free. To make reparation for his crimes, Lane plans to steal back a priceless Metropolis poster and return it to its rightful owner. But to find it, he has to break into the home of Hayrick Letsen, the man who turned his life into a living nightmare. The last thing Lane expects to encounter is Letsen’s nosy but crazy-hot security guard.

Quincy Holt’s life has been ruined. He’s infamous in Oklahoma as a cop on the take, but what no one knows is that he was unofficially undercover, trying to get the goods on Letsen — the most wanted fence in the business. When that failed, he was left with no other option but to take a job as Letsen’s security guard.

Lane and Quincy are on the run from their mutual enemy while trying to right past wrongs. Neither expected a thief and a cop to have the kind of wild, off-the-charts chemistry that could very well end up breaking their hearts.

____

You can get your copy here!

Before the hubby was put on a low low salt diet, we used to order Chinese food every weekend. They always included a lot of fortune cookies, so I started saving them up. Now, we only order once a month—maybe—but I still have all these fortune cookies and open one every week. (Well, I did. Apparently, he decided the cookies needed to be thrown out last week in the great clean out. In his defense, he had no idea how much fun I had opening these every week.)

I may build my stash back up so I can do more of these posts. I know fortune cookies are silly and mean absolutely nothing, but sometimes, it’s fun when you get a message you needed to hear. There are a few that came during some very interesting times, so I thought I’d share.

This is the year when ingenuity stands high on the list.

I got this one the night I was discussing two things. Putting out Psycho Romeo in audio and putting out solo MM romances. That was the plan for this year along with the four books Jocelynn and I had scheduled. I hit a few road bumps as everyone knows now, but I’m still hopeful at least one solo will go out this year. (Joce and I are right on schedule with three out this year already!) As for the audio, we jumped into that one and Psycho Romeo is now up with Audible and narrated by the talented Kenneth Obi.

Embrace change, don’t battle it.

Oh, did I need to get this one! As you can tell from that painfully revealing last post, I battle everything. I’m stubborn and always believe I can do things for myself. I’ve always run myself ragged trying to do it all myself. I don’t delegate well. LOL. But accepting that my biggest battle has to do with missing chemicals was hard. Even after I was told, I fought the diagnosis and well, I’m still learning. Like every other human being out there. We are always learning.

When in doubt, mumble.

Including this one because it cracked me up. Not only do I do this, but my characters often do as well.

This is very long and very revealing story about one person’s journey with mental illness, so you may want to grab a cup of coffee or something. It’s time I shared a story with all the people who have known me for more than ten years because I disappeared offline and I’d like them to know why. I’m also doing this because maybe, just maybe, it might make someone else step up to get help instead of doing what I did.

Sharing this is hard as hell.

First and most important, despite all of this, I managed to continue working toward my dream. You CAN be a successful and productive member of society even when fighting a difficult illness. And not everyone gets to the point I did. Some find out a lot earlier and do so much better than I have. And this doesn’t mean I’m not a strong and sometimes, confident, woman. I am. It’s just there’s this extra challenge…

I’ve actually been writing posts like this for years. I delete them because frankly, it’s rough out there. There is so much judgement  toward people now. I know there always has been, but we’re exposed to it constantly on social media and it takes a toll.

And so often, that judgment is about how authors write, what they write, how they promote… We’re writing fiction. Telling stories. Sometimes people in those stories aren’t perfect. We’re not perfect. But it feels like authors are constantly wading into molten lava. Every single time I publish, I have to fight tripping over into a bad space out of fear.

So why don’t I quit? I love what I do. I’m writing books I truly love writing and yes, it’s also my job and how I pay my bills. I push through out of sheer tenacity.

But you know what? Books, written by other authors, saved my life more than once. Fiction is a wonderful escape and for some, it can be a way to bring a chaotic mind into focus.

So what made me finally decide to post this when I’ve hesitated for so long? I recently, I saw my book cover in a group of favorite books with author Gena Showalter’s. It made me look up this picture. This was ten years ago and I hardly recognize the woman (Me) in this image. People didn’t know I was going through hell at that time. I hid a lot. But I was still mostly functioning at this point. I was still meeting friends for dinners and lunches, still attending writer’s meetings at the RWA chapter where I’d been on the board for six years. I was still attending a yearly local writer’s conference that I loved.

But I dealt with such severe anxiety; I would worry so much before a meeting, then obsess over every word out of my mouth for days and weeks after. It was exhausting.

I also have…quirks. For instance, when my anxiety gets too high, I can sometimes trip over into this kind of restlessness that lasts for many days. It’s not a happy, happy fun place either. In fact, some are periods of hell on Earth with uncontrollable crying, an inability to focus, and dark thoughts. And then, there’s the talking. Nerves would take over and I would talk so much. The last big local writer’s retreat I went to was hard because a good friend in the group was fighting cancer and my personal life was falling apart–I was an emotional mess. So, I talked too much.

Anyway, that ended up being my last retreat for many years because another author got disgusted with me and said something cruel. I was so embarrassed, I never went back.

BUT—and this is a big but—also, around that time, a series of extremely hard life things happened and I lost the ability to cope. I crawled into a rough place and… stayed.

I stopped doing anything that could trigger that unbearable anxiety. This led me to narrow my world until I took it to an extreme. I spent years doing this until it reached a point where I couldn’t drive out of my town without having panic attacks.

I went from being the president of an RWA chapter to someone who couldn’t even leave her house. I also didn’t tell people because I was so embarrassed and ashamed. I’m sure most think of me as unsocial now, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I started feeling so bad about turning down invitations; I backed away from almost everyone. Any hint of a guilt trip and I pushed away. I had no choice.

Every now and then, I managed to do something. I have a couple of tenacious friends who figured out something was going on with me. Rachel Vincent would come and get me out of the house on the days I could. And she never, not one time, made me feel bad when I couldn’t. In 2015, she even got me to go with her to Texas to a RT convention so I could meet with my agent and work with Jocelynn Drake in person. (I didn’t attend the convention—just hung out with a few friends.) Jocelynn is that other friend who talked me into writing with her when I had decided I couldn’t do this anymore. Both of them love me and knew if I stopped writing, it wouldn’t be good.  But even they didn’t know how bad things really were.

In 2016, I hit another deep depression and this time, I couldn’t pull out. It went on so long, I stopped being able to hide it. The election played a huge part of this. I could simply not stop being sad on a deep level that’s hard to describe. In 2017, I stopped being able to hide how bad it was. Family started randomly showing up to check on me. And though this is incredibly hard to confess, I was in a spiral of suicidal thoughts I couldn’t pull out of. It wasn’t my first round with that fight and I was terrified I was going to lose that time.

When this kind of depression hits, it takes over everything. It doesn’t matter that you have a family you love and you know love you. Or good friends. In addition to all that, my career was finally seeing a little light. I was getting messages from men and women who love the books. I had so much going for me. But you see, none of that matters when you can’t face getting up one more day feeling that heavy, heavy drudge of depression and disconnection.

Last year, I finally said something. I didn’t mean to, but I went in for persistent pain as always and had the most humiliating break down in front of a physician’s assistant. She wouldn’t let me leave for a long time that day and not until I agreed to go on anti-depressants and check in.

A month later, I was in with my general practitioner and he’d gone through the years of medical tests. (Um, I built up big medical debt thinking something was physically wrong.) The doctor studied everything. He asked questions and had me fill out questionnaires.

He asked why I hadn’t been honest with him before. He was upset that I’d suffered silently for so many years. Why hadn’t I explained the illogical, crippling health fears, the bedridden times? Why hadn’t I told him that sometimes writing a book takes so much effort to concentrate, I crash harder than I used to after them? He was so upset because he said shutting myself in and cutting so much out of my life is a classic symptom of something I had no idea I had.

Apparently, I’ve been dealing with bipolar disorder my entire life.

I didn’t believe him at first. For one, I’m in my forties. Wouldn’t I have known this by now? Also, I knew nothing about it other than what I’d read or seen in movies and television, and let’s face it, those depictions aren’t flattering.

My doctor set me straight. It’s different for everyone. It’s an illness just like my Graves Disease and absolutely nothing to be ashamed about. (So nobody get offended. I’m new at this and working on that part.) It means I feel things on such a deep level, there are times I can’t deal. It means there is a reason I find it hard to focus and have to work harder at it.

It means there are chemical and biological issues that are completely out of my control.

He talked about how this is just a part of what makes me the person who can tap into a deep well of emotion. Oh, he said a lot of things about creative people and seeing so much beauty and darkness in the world… I know why he was saying all these things. My sense of self-worth was completely gone and had been for some time.

The one part that did settle in? When this goes untreated, it gets really bad. Like it did with me. Borderline agoraphobia happens. He said it was amazing I was still here. So, he set me up on medication and had me come in every couple of months.

This was one year ago. I still don’t know a lot. I do know I’ve had a rough time with medications. I’m about to start working with a professional. (One of those good friends hasn’t been thrilled I’m letting a GP handle my precious brain anyway. Those are her words.

THE EXCITEMENT IN THE DRAKE AND ELLIOTT HOUSE RIGHT NOW IS INTENSE!

Yes, Jocelynn and I are feeling it this week. We love our Unbreakable Boys so, so much. And we missed them so, so much. We’d always planned to do a novella and it was actually planned for Lucas and Andrei’s ‘real’ first anniversary later this year. But the story grew and then well, as you’ll see when you read the book, another character’s story also grew…

We’ve decided to write what we want to write. To dive into the stories that speak to us. So Blaze turned into a full book, giving us a chance to delve into the relationship that is Lucas and Snow, as well, because let’s face it, they are the glue that started it all. Lucas, Snow, Rowe, and Ian just breathe inside us. Sounds corny, I know. Eh, don’t really care that it does. We are who we are.