Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

I’ve had the same desk setup for nearly 20 years and it’s killing me. Okay that may be a tad over the top, but the strange ergonomics have wreaked havoc on my body.

It’s time for a change. My keyboard sits too high, so my chair seat is too high, which puts my legs and shoulder at risk, because naturally my mouse is also too high. I’ve managed to deal with this for a lot of years and a lot of books.

But, sadly, my body’s had enough. It’s forcing me out into the world to go shop for a new desk. One that fits. One that has drawers to hide the paper that floods my desk. One that’s pretty and new and smells not of wood and lemon wax, but chemicals and glue. (Did I say it had to be cheap…no? Sorry, it has to be, ahem, less than expensive.)

Hold on, that’s my editor calling offering me tons more money so I can buy a better desk that smells of red cedar…hm, I could have sworn I heard the phone . . .

But I digress. . . I’ve dealt with this weird body pretzeling situation by many other means over the years. I’ve done yoga to stay limber, I go for massage therapy (not the feel good, happy, stress-relieving variety; I mean the elbow in the back, pinching the trigger points variety).

I’ve bought a new chair, added a back rest. I’ve put my feet up on my desk, with my keyboard in my lap.
I’ve walked for miles, stretched, danced, you name it. All because I refused to see that my desk was the root of the problem.

My daughter was with me while I tried on desks at the store and came up with the brilliant observation that if I’ve done this well with my career under these circumstances, then imagine what I can do when I get everything to fit right?

That sounded quite pithy in the lust of shopping, but now, I wonder if it isn’t the same logic that says new running shoes help you run faster.

At any rate, I plan on getting a new desk and repositioning it to face the room. I’ve hated staring at a wall for 20 years (my desktop is on wall-mounted brackets). I tried to take a picture of my wall, but it doesn’t look all that great. I mean, it’s blank and stares back at me.

I hope this new set up translates into more books, better ideas, hotter characters and more creative storylines.

I’ll let you know next month! Ah, I can feel the relief now.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. I finished writing WOLF TALES 10 and did the copy edits for WOLF TALES 9, and then I had to get right to work on HellFire, the second book in my new series, THE DEMONSLAYERS, which is a Kensington Zebra series, not Aphrodisia, and I have to tell you, it was just weird! Not the story, but switching worlds. I’ve been writing about my Chanku shapeshifters now since 2005. I know every single one of those characters as if they were real people. Anton Cheval speaks to me in a voice that’s so clear I recognize him when I’m dreaming, and when I hear Keisha ripping him a new one, I always have to smile because she does it with love and still puts the arrogant uber-alpha in his place!

Anyway, my editor wanted the first two chapters of HellFire to go in the back of DemonFire, so the morning after I mailed off my completed manuscript and the copy edits for two of my Wolf Tales, I sat down to write HellFire…and all I did for most of the morning was stare at the frickin’ blank screen! Oh, and doodle around Facebook and MySpace and check email, read blogs, go back to the blank screen, screw around some more. I finally had to pull out the completed manuscript for DemonFire, print it out and read it to get back into that world. Once I’d reread the story, my characters were there in my mind, real people, every one of them, and the story just flowed.

Which brings me to the point of this post (and see, you were wondering if there WAS a point, weren’t you?) and that is whether or not you have a problem switching genres when you read? I don’t, which is why I was so shocked at the issues I ran into writing in two worlds. I read everything, from historicals to contemporaries, from erotic romance to paranormals and urban fantasy, and I love all of them, but I’ll admit that I’m concerned my readers won’t like my new paranormal series because it’s not erotic romance. Granted, I really REALLY wanted to put Dax and his buddy Alton together in bed, and I had to force myself to keep the sex straight, but I still think it’s sexy and the romance is hot, the sexual tension is there, but it’s definitely NOT Wolf Tales.

I hope that’s not a problem, and for what it’s worth, I’m still writing Wolf Tales, too…just gotta keep those worlds separate! The newseries doesn’t debut until March, but if you want a feel for it, I’ve got a first chapter posted at www.katedouglas.com. Just click on the cover!