The results from the rematch of the Villaintine’s Rematch are in:

“The Things I’ll do to your heart, Valentine” is still the winner! I don’t know how to feel, because it is a really strong one (with its dark implicit threat and all), but I was quietly hoping that “If Evil, then why Hot?” might pull ahead, because I’m so very fond of it. But that is the voice of the people, and thank you so much for taking the time to vote!

I guess you all just love a dark implicit threat from a Hot Baddie…

Meet The New Character

I am so pleased to report that I can now go back to saying that “This newsletter is taking me away from working on Book IV, Blood Depths!” 😉

For those new to the newsletter (Hi there! 👋) my poor readers have been waiting for the next stage of Noosh’s journey through the world of the am’r for years now.

First I needed to leave my terrible old publisher and republish the books with IIP (which was a very intense and time-consuming learning experience), then my new publisher wanted some shorter works from me, so I wrote and published Blood Triad, Interview with the Vagabond King, Finding Bela Lugosi, and That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story, all of which pulled me away from Book IV. Then, getting the books into audiobook format kept me very busy with its own learning curve. Then, starting learning how to vend and the decision to try and have a very busy convention/event season last summer through Halloween was a serious pull away from the poor novel. Finally, just as I settled into making time for it, I’ve had to move in with my mom because of her health, and I lost a month of writing just taking her to doctor’s appointments and PT. (All of this while working around the limitations of my own chronic illness, which of course just makes it all so much more fun!)

But now it is February, I am a bit more settled in to life over here, and all I want to do is dive back in to Blood Depths 🌊 (Yes, pun intended.) Last week, as I was sitting around at a 2.5 hour appointment for my mother, I brought the laptop and started the work of reworking Chapter One. (Half the chapters I’ve managed to write have to be completely rewritten, which is too long a story to review here, but I promise the book will be immeasurably better for me doing this.)

This week I’m back at it, finishing up the new, improved chapter one.

I wanted the reason for all this work to be a big surprise to my readers, but that really only works if I can get a book out once a year. Once I’ve been keeping everyone waiting this long, trying to pull off that surprise no long makes sense, as by now I owe you all deeply informative updates on the process, to thank you for sticking around with me all this time 💖

So, I’m going to spill the beans! Noosh is being joined by a new character who is starting her own journey into the world of the am’r: Caaisho.

And as you see, my cover artist Kwasi has already been working with bring her to life!

Caaisho comes from a very different background than Noosh (obviously) and thus is going to respond to the am’r in totally different ways. Also, her introduction is not going to be all “meet-cute in the library” —after all, these are vampire pirates we are dealing with in this book! This is a bumpier road we are all going down together—because, say it with me, “Vampires are actually monsters and they don’t sparkle!” 🚫✨

I hope you’ll love Caaisho as much as you do Noosh. She is also a kick-ass strong woman, who will be bringing a very fresh attitude to dealing with the am’r and their vampiric shenanigans. Bagamil had wanted the am’r world to be shaken up a bit…but none of them are expecting Caaisho! (Here’s how to pronounce it, BTW)

Stay tuned to this channel 📺 to get to know this new character better as I finally get Book IV written for you 📝

The Winners Love Their Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Thanks to the first three of you who wrote in wanting to help me figure out shipping for the bookmarks—and I’m so pleased with how much you all love them 🔖💞

JT was kind enough to share this image 🥰

Happily, I found out that with the new small bubble mailers I bought, and how light the bookmarks are, that I can request it to be sent “First Class — non-machinable” and it costs less than a dollar to ship, so I can ship these for FREE!

Which I also can do if they are included in packages with books in, obviously! So if you have a friend who needs a signed copy of any of the books in the series (or if you are filling in your library), don’t worry that throwing one of these beauties in will up your shipping costs—they won’t!

Stained Glass Bookmark Blood Demands

These gorgeous — and durable — acrylic bookmarks will take your reading experience to the next level! They are 5″ x 1.875″ — a perfect size for every book in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series — or any other book in your collection. And they won’t add any weight to your bookbag. The artwork is a “stained glass” FREE SHIPPING!

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/stained-glass-bookmark-blood-demands

And now for a word from this week’s sponsor:

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Vampires have tails!

My Bizarreries segment is still running over in Warren Ellis’ newsletter Orbital Operations. You should go check it out, because he has really excellent recommendations for books, comics, music, and really random cool shit. I actually buy stuff based on his recs!

Click here to read the whole thing

OK, I think that’s enough for this week—I know you’d rather I be writing the next novel, so I’ll hit “publish” and get back to my proper work! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

We started the annual Villantine’s Day celebration with the Baddest Bad Guy of the series: Kurgan. As we ramp up to releasing the audiobook of Blood Eternal this year, I wanted to bring back the first batch of Villaintine’s cards back for a rematch ⚔️

The winner last time was “The things I’ll do to your heart, Valentine” — and while I do love the threatening nature of that one, I also love both the other options just as much…

The results from the first round…

Also, there are a lot more readers of this newsletter now than when I first ran this poll, so I think it’s only right that I run this one again, and let our new friends have their input on this deeply important matter. So here are your choices:

OK, now, here’s the poll. Let the best card win!

If you would like any of the images to send to friends, just let me know and I will send you the image, sized for easy email sharing 💌

I’ll announce the winner in the next newsletter, so stay tuned to this great channel 📺

Something kinda exciting has happened 💥

I now have a wee guest spot over at Warren Ellis’ newsletter (the comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter), sharing “Raven Belasco’s Bizarreries” every week. His newsletter is one of the few I make time for regularly (along with Cecilia Tan’s and Tiffany Trent’s) so I recommend it highly to you.

This is the first one! Follow Orbital Operations to read the further ones!

Book Recommendation: Bound by the Blood 🩸🩸🩸

Two members of The Big Glasses Brigade 🤓

So, you all know my life has been subsumed by becoming the caregiver to my mother and needing to move in with her for the foreseeable future. But I did manage to get out yesterday to my salon for a very overdue haircut and color, and then after that to Cecilia’s book launch, which was conveniently at my beloved Pandemonium Books

I just frickin’ adore Cecilia. She is one of those people I can talk for hours with and then, when we have to go do other things, be sad because the conversation felt all-too-short.

Getting to be friends with Cecilia is one of the wonderful perks of having become an author. I’ve been a fan of C. Tan since, I dunno, college or right after? Pretty sure I found her in Blue Blood Magazine? This is a person whom I idolized from afar, and who I now get to be friends with?! I am a writer for many reasons … but the perk of getting to hang out with authors you adore is not to be sneezed at 😉

There was real excitement about this book, which is described as “An Urban Fantasy BDSM Romantic Suspense“ (so if you like those things, GO GET IT)

It’s on the top of my to-read pile, but you don’t need my review, because Cecilia has only gone and gotten a review from Anne Muthafuckin’ Rice’s son (I’m what you could call painfully jealous) and I probably couldn’t do a better review than this anyway:

If you haven’t voted, scroll back up and do so! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you will recall from the last email, my entire life has been thrown up in the air, as I have moved in with my mom to become her caregiver as we try to get her to be able to walk again. More about that later in the email, but I have finally started to move my office into her home, and get set up to do direct sales from her house, and all the stuff an indie author needs 😮‍💨

So I can finally share our incredible new reader swag: Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Everyone’s favorite cover!

I am totally in love with this one!

I wanted to present these gorgeous bookmarks to you all set and ready to go, but I am missing one vital piece of information for our Shopify store: how much USPS will charge for shipping them! I’m used to dealing with getting the books out, but for orders of just these amazing bookmarks by themselves, I have no idea what it will cost 🤔

So it’s giveaway time! 🎁

The first three people who email me and request either the Blood Ex Libris or Blood Demands bookmark will get their order for FREE, and you’ll be doing me a favor, as I both need to find out how much they cost to ship, and also get to know the local post office where I’m now living.

🆓 Email me and tell me which bookmark you want – you might win a free one!

I honestly can’t tell which one I like best!

Argh! They are so good! 🤩

OK, that’s all the business stuff for this email, keep reading if you just want to keep up with me, or go on about your day 🙂

It’s been a FUCKING INSANE two weeks since last I wrote to you. I’ve moved from my house into my mom’s guest bedroom (and office!) The first week, she was in terrible pain, and everything was a huge, exhausting production, and I spent every moment of the day attending to her and trying to get her life back in some kind of order, as well as doctor’s appointments and PT.

At the end of the second week, due to some useful pain management, we are doing a little better. I am hopeful that I might be able to get a few hours each day to myself to write and do the other business of being a writer.

Never have I wished that the am’r would pay me a visit more. Seeing what aging is putting my mom through is terrible, and as rough and violent as the am’r world is, getting old as a kee is a billion times harder…

If you have elderly people in your life, give them a call and tell them that they are superheroes who kick ass each day in the face of all that an aging body is throwing at them, and how unhelpful health care can be, and how poorly society in general treats the elderly 🦸‍♀️

OK, that all said, next month is going to have some far more exciting emails coming out to you. Because our annual Villiantine’s Day has not been forgotten! And even more exciting news to follow that…!

Archie helping me write this newsletter on my mom’s sofa

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Hey Fabulous Readers!

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the January newsletters aren’t going to be quite as thrilling as I had planned. My Mom had a serious health situation back in October, and she isn’t recovering well. I needed to pack up myself and Archie and move in with her for a while to help her with physical therapy and all the stuff she needs to get back on her feet — literally!

However, this means I’m away from my office, and most of my time and energy will be going to helping out my mom, not doing cool stuff for the books. So all planned stuff has been abruptly moved to February, and thus the two January newsletters are not going to be packed full with all the exciting stuff that was previously scheduled.

What this means for you is actually not bad news, because I will only have my laptop with me, and there’s not much I can do on my laptop except work on my next novel. So in between physical therapy sessions and stuff, I will be full steam ahead on Blood Depths, without other business distractions getting in the way. Since I know this is what you all want most from me, well, like I said, not bad news for you!

I was thinking about what to do with these two “lost newsletters” for this month while I was walking Archie this morning, and I decided what I could give you during this time-period was a couple “getting to know Raven” deep dives, since that’s always something you Fantabulous Newsletter Readers seem to enjoy.

But first, for those of you who were too busy to go grab the Sandu Xmas story, it’s ready and waiting for you — and has gotten some great reviews so far 🥰

To start us off, here’s… How You Build A Bookworm

The seeds for my eventually being the writer you know today were planted very early. My mom read me Lord of the Rings when I was five years old, and it definitely gave me a standard of what to expect from reading, one that the public school system was not prepared for.

And I wanted to read! I came home crying from the first day of kindergarten, and my mom, very worried, asked, “What happened at school?” And I responded, “I didn’t learn how to read!”

Eventually, the alphabet had been banged into my brain, and I was reading sentences. I was not enjoying those sentences, because the school was giving me books like Gordon the Goat. Now, Gordan was not having The Battle of Five Armies or engaging with dragons, or visiting Lothlorien. As I recall, the highlight of Gordon’s day was eating a tin can. Not very compelling stuff.

The next family story about me and reading comes when my mom was called into school because I was failing reading comprehension, in first grade. They were giving us these cards with a story on one side, and questions about the story on the other side. I was answering those questions not just wrong, but like I was on drugs at that tender age.

Luckily for me, the first grade teacher cared about her students, and she had taken time to ask me some questions, and had figured out that I had read the stories on the front of the cards, thought they were deeply stupid, had rewritten them in my head to be better stories, and was then answering the questions based on my far superior narratives 😂

That was probably the last time my mom got called in for any issues with reading or writing, because it very soon became clear that I was having troubles with math, and that became the issue for the rest of my schooling. Since girls weren’t expected to be good at math anyway, nobody troubled to notice that I am dyscalculic. My mom was regularly told, “She can follow the logic of the word problems, then she just gets lazy with the math part.” 🙄

So math became something I dreaded and did as little of as possible, and reading became my escape.

I needed the escape because from second grade on, I was rated as a glasses-wearing nerd, a bookworm and general loser. I was picked last in gym, I had no friends, and basically was a living example of a character from Revenge of the Nerds.

The glasses really were the final nail in my social coffin…

I avoided dealing with those issues by reading every fantasy book that would hold still long enough, making no distinction between juvenile lit and adult fantasy novels. (Starting things off with Lord of the Rings had really ruined me for reading at my age level.) For a nerd, I got very bad grades, because during class I was often holding a fantasy novel under my desk and reading it instead of paying attention.

All of this, of course, was excellent preparation for being a writer later. I agree with Robert Heinlein that “Writing can be learned, but not taught.” I think the best thing anyone can do who wants to be a writer is to read voraciously, through all genres and styles of writing. Doing that not only exposes you to incredible examples of writing, but also shows you how to do every aspect of writing. More importantly, it also teaches you how NOT to do things. If you are reading something and think a character is intolerable or the plot is slow and uncompelling, well, there you go, there’s an example of how not to write! 😁

I could talk about this forever, but this is definitely long enough for a newsletter! For those of you who made it to this point, you are fucking amazing and I appreciate you 🥰

To all my readers, I hope your 2026 has started a bit more smoothly than mine, but at any rate, I look forward to being in contact with you twice a month in the year to come. Please feel free to respond to the newsletters (just hit reply, it’s that easy!) and chat with me about stuff. (There is starting to be a bigger readership, but I’m still at the point where I am accessible to you all. If my plans work out, there will come a day when you write to me and get a reply from my personal assistant who will tell you I appreciate your email but am too busy to respond personally — but since we aren’t there yet, take advantage of it 😉)

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Since I know this story is what you want most, here is the link!

If you want to know more first, here’s some info:

The story is set at the same time as the first three chapters of Blood Ex Libris, but from Sandu’s perspective—and yes, that means you get the full story of his being am’r-napped and tortured that he only glosses over at the Big Am’r Summit in the Rave Cave.

So the two main features of the story are: seeing the meeting of Noosh and Sandu’s through Sandu’s eyes, and then the rest of the story is just the kind of thrilling torture and revengeful action-y escape that you want from holiday films like Die Hard, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Red One, or Violent Night. It’s got “Christmas-specific torture” — you’ll need to read it to get it, but I think you’ll all find it a kick in the pants

Plus, for those of you who prefer less open-door spice, this story takes place before all that gets going in Blood Ex Libris, so it’s just violent vampire action, not sexy vampire action. All the other stuff you love is there, however: swearing in Romanian, historical bits, global settings — the usual BAAS recipe for am’r goodness.

I didn’t mean to write this story this year. My publisher has been demanding it for some time now, and suddenly, in late November, the story just started happening in my brain, so I had to rush to get it out on the page.

It actually fucked up quite a few of my other plans, hustling to get the story done and edited and published before Xmas. So please go grab your copy, because I really put the sweat, blood, and tears into this one!

(There was supposed to be a fancier cover — I found a great artist and we were totally on the same page about the cover art, but then there was a misunderstanding about the delivery date. So there will be a better cover in the future, but for now I just wanted to get it out to you all, and since it’s an ebook, the title page works well enough until the real cover comes along.)

(N.B.—if you are completely opposed to spending money on Amazon — which I understand and believe me I wish I could sell books without involving Amazon at all — email me and we’ll get you the story another way)

This is the final newsletter of 2025! 🕰️

I’m exhausted. It’s been an insane year! 😵

📅January — IIP republished Blood Ad Infinitum as Blood Eternal (may I never have to rename a book EVER!) and I got to give a talk with Cecilia Tan to Emerson College about being an indie author

📅February — the second year of the Villaintine’s Day vote. I love this tradition! But also my hand surgery that totally messed up my writing schedule for the whole year

📅March — Die Feen released their song about Blood Eternal “Mistakes”

📅April – May — the drama of writing Finding Bela Lugosi for the doomed Bauhaus anthology, then finding out the editor of said anthology was “not someone you’d want to work with” (I am putting this so very delicately!) and then the quest for getting the rights to use the lyrics from “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” from Bauhaus, managing to get it published for World Dracula Day; plus doing readings online and posting videos about vampires and being an indie author (And it’s still free online!)

Instagram post

📅June — going to the literal Sunnydale Hellmouth and getting to do a panel with the most fantastic Amber Benson

📅July — That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story makes a huge splash, and I attend Readercon for the first time, and totally fall in love with the convention

📅August — Yet another article published in Book Life by Publisher’s Weekly. And I finally get back to work on Blood Depths

📅September — I try vending at new places, like the Dark Forest Oddities Expo (not the greatest success) and the Vampfangs Vampire Market (a shockingly great success)

📅October — I have the best time ever on The Historic Lesbian Motifs podcast and of course Paulette Kennedy’s Live series, and vending at my beloved Pandemonium, as well as having my bestie over for carving punkins on Halloween

Instagram post

📅November — Back into Blood Depths, but get surprise-attacked by the Sandu Xmas Story that demands to be written…

Editing the Sandu Xmas story two days ago, with the vital assistance of Archie, of course!

📅December — trip to LA to finally record Blood Eternal with Amber Benson, publish Dracula’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Christmas, and working on a whole bunch of other exciting stuff for 2026

I feel like it was a pretty damn important year for both the series and for me as an author and person. Writing the shorter stories proved to me as a writer that I can really get a lot out of writing things that aren’t novels (I had done it before, but once I started writing novels those really took over!) and they also brought a lot of new readers to the series.

One of my goals had been to get out there and vend more and attend more conventions. It was baby-steps, but I think I chose mostly good places and they were worth the time, energy, and money. Because of my chronic illness, committing to three-day events is terrifying, and even a one-day event can cause me to lose a week after in recovery time. My next goal is to figure out vending in a state where I’m not already set up for paying sales tax, and just doing as many conventions as my health will allow.

My biggest goal for 2026 is just to get Blood Depths written as fast and as well as I possibly can. While I think all the distractions in 2025 were worthy endeavors, there are a lot of new characters I can’t wait for you to meet, and I really just want to sink back into novel writing, and just do the thing I love most about being an author—you know, write books—with less Other Stuff getting in the way.

Thank you all for sticking with me through another year of trying to figure out how to do this indie author thing. You newsletter readers are really the rock in the storm for me, and I deeply appreciate every one of you who takes the time to read each bi-monthly email, respond to polls and other questions, and support each story as it comes your way.

I hope you have a safe and joyful holiday season, and I look forward to sharing the world of the am’r with you in 2026! 🥂 And of course, until the next newsletter, be good or be good at it!😘

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

I’m going to throw in some vital news and updates up front here, but then the rest of this newsletter is a travelogue sharing my recent trip to LA. I’m only posting it here, for you my beloved newsletter readers

🎉First and most importantly, I can now announce that Blood Eternal has FINALLY been recorded in audiobook 🎉

Read again (and of course!) by Amber Benson. You guys are hearing it first! There will be more news about the audiobook in the coming weeks, but read the travelogue below to get the inside scoop…

The Sandu Xmas story is done in the first draft and just sent to the editor! I’m trying to get a cover happening while she does her thang…

I will be vending at the Pandemonium Holiday Faire On Sunday Dec 14

Be there or risk Santa’s Naughty List!

I’ll bring free hot chocolate and of course my red sharpie for signing your books ✒️ ⁠ If you are looking to shop local and indie, or just need to grab a few more items to check off your own Santa list, there will be unique vendors selling a variety of geeky wares: Illustrations, hand-made stuffed animals, bags, jewelry, dice, and so much more 🎁 ⁠ The faire will run from 12 PM to 5 PM. See you there! ✨

There are also freshly printed copies of That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story (for those of you who somehow don’t have yours yet) so if you can come down and get it signed in person, I’ll be wearing my ugly Xmas sweater and serving up free hot cocoa!

If you live too far away, order your signed copies here and I will get them out to you ASAP. If you order in the next couple days there’s still time for books to get there to be under the tree or by the menorah, or wherever you pile your prezzies 🎁🎁🎁

Don’t forget, ebooks and audiobooks make great holiday gifts, and they don’t require worrying about shipping times. All my audiobooks are up on Audible, through your other preferred audiobook provider, or you can buy them directly from me to own without membership issues

Special LA Trip Travelogue—Ride Along With Raven As She Goes On An Author Adventure

📆 Friday 5^th

Flying out from BOS to LAX. Flight very full, but people are in good spirits and friendly, and it’s almost like the government shutdown didn’t wreck such disaster on commercial aviation just a few weeks ago.

Looking forward to six uninterrupted hours of editing the Sandu Xmas story…

California here I come!

Just woke up from an accidental three hour nap! I can’t ever sleep on planes, but I had packed myself a big container of Turkey Day leftovers, and apparently, enough tryptophan, carbs and fats will give me a case of “the itis” that will overcome even my discomfort in flying! Good to know for the future…but now I’m kinda annoyed I only got one hour of editing in

***

It was a really smooth flight, got my luggage with no problems, and now ensconced with my friend Mija in Long Beach. I love this town. I have been promised Mexican food every day I’m out here, to make up for the lack of it in MA. Tonight is tacos, baby! 🌮🌮

📆 Sat 6^th

Ugh, jet lag is horrible. Spending the day resting before having to be “on” in the evening.

Picked up by Lore to drive over to the movie viewings and dinner. We hold a business meeting through the infamous LA traffic. Very productive that way, at least!

***
Home, too tired to keep my eyes open. What an amazing evening! Met and chatted with some really fun and interesting people, doing cool projects. Watched two classic horror films (Equinox and The Blob) and learned about how they were made. Delicious mango sticky rice after dinner! And I got to ride a little train!

I was introduced tonight as “Raven Belasco—she’s an accomplished author,” so I’m going to need you all to add that to my name henceforth: “Raven Belasco—Accomplished Author”

(Very happy the little terrier in The Blob didn’t die! I was so worried about them! Was very glad to find out it ran away. I hope it ended up in a good place eventually. Also, possibly more worrying: does climate change mean that The Blob is going to eat us all?!)

📆 Sun 7^th

Heading to the studio shortly to do the final recordings for Blood Eternal. Excited to spend time with Amber, and finally meet our recording engineer par excellence, Eli, in person.

***
Exhausted, in bed. Can barely hold my eyes open, but want to get down these memories…

Today was one of the best days of my author career. Met Lore at the gorgeous little recording studio where Blood Eternal has been being recorded. Amber and Eli were already inside, starting the pickups. Came in, hugged people, got to work. It was so much fun, and so damn impressive, being there for the process and getting to help out a bit with the last tricky pronunciation issues.

Then, the part I’d had some butterflies for: me getting behind the mic myself, to record the opening and closing parts of the book.

Back in college, I’d had a radio show (the Indigo Hours, where I played jazz and blues) and in my previous job for the language course company I ended up in their recording studio a number of times. But it had been a hot minute since I was trying to sound all professional with a mic in hand.

I did my best, enjoyed myself, and they say I sounded good (I’ll find out soon enough if they were just being kind!) and that was a wrap on Blood Eternal!

Me being a little too excited about “That’s a wrap!”

We celebrated with a meal at an amazing café, and sat and talked into the afternoon. The café had these insane gluten free waffles, and a lavender matcha, and so my part of the discussion was very much powered by caffeine and sugar.

Lore and I wandered around a bit after that, having a roving business meeting that included wandering around The Ripped Bodice, and ending up in a boba joint.

I’d run out of spoons some time ago by that point, and getting back to Long Beach included a stop at the wonderful Mexican place from the other night and getting more delicious tacos and mango agua fresca.

Passing out now 😵

📆 Mon 8^th

The original plan for the day got rescheduled for a future trip, so today was a “free day,” and in discussion with Mija, I realized what I wanted most was to sit in a café and write. (Technically, edit, but since I love all the stages of writing that’s all good.) So she suggested an appropriate spot called The Library Coffee Shop and after brunch and a visit to the dog park with her fantastic pup, we finally found ourselves ensconced there with caffeine (I got a fantastic latte called the Vanilla Goddess, and which lived up to the name!) and our laptops open, as we sat and wrote together.

Coffee and editing

The results from the rematch of the Villaintine’s Rematch are in:

“The Things I’ll do to your heart, Valentine” is still the winner! I don’t know how to feel, because it is a really strong one (with its dark implicit threat and all), but I was quietly hoping that “If Evil, then why Hot?” might pull ahead, because I’m so very fond of it. But that is the voice of the people, and thank you so much for taking the time to vote!

I guess you all just love a dark implicit threat from a Hot Baddie…

Meet The New Character

I am so pleased to report that I can now go back to saying that “This newsletter is taking me away from working on Book IV, Blood Depths!” 😉

For those new to the newsletter (Hi there! 👋) my poor readers have been waiting for the next stage of Noosh’s journey through the world of the am’r for years now.

First I needed to leave my terrible old publisher and republish the books with IIP (which was a very intense and time-consuming learning experience), then my new publisher wanted some shorter works from me, so I wrote and published Blood Triad, Interview with the Vagabond King, Finding Bela Lugosi, and That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story, all of which pulled me away from Book IV. Then, getting the books into audiobook format kept me very busy with its own learning curve. Then, starting learning how to vend and the decision to try and have a very busy convention/event season last summer through Halloween was a serious pull away from the poor novel. Finally, just as I settled into making time for it, I’ve had to move in with my mom because of her health, and I lost a month of writing just taking her to doctor’s appointments and PT. (All of this while working around the limitations of my own chronic illness, which of course just makes it all so much more fun!)

But now it is February, I am a bit more settled in to life over here, and all I want to do is dive back in to Blood Depths 🌊 (Yes, pun intended.) Last week, as I was sitting around at a 2.5 hour appointment for my mother, I brought the laptop and started the work of reworking Chapter One. (Half the chapters I’ve managed to write have to be completely rewritten, which is too long a story to review here, but I promise the book will be immeasurably better for me doing this.)

This week I’m back at it, finishing up the new, improved chapter one.

I wanted the reason for all this work to be a big surprise to my readers, but that really only works if I can get a book out once a year. Once I’ve been keeping everyone waiting this long, trying to pull off that surprise no long makes sense, as by now I owe you all deeply informative updates on the process, to thank you for sticking around with me all this time 💖

So, I’m going to spill the beans! Noosh is being joined by a new character who is starting her own journey into the world of the am’r: Caaisho.

And as you see, my cover artist Kwasi has already been working with bring her to life!

Caaisho comes from a very different background than Noosh (obviously) and thus is going to respond to the am’r in totally different ways. Also, her introduction is not going to be all “meet-cute in the library” —after all, these are vampire pirates we are dealing with in this book! This is a bumpier road we are all going down together—because, say it with me, “Vampires are actually monsters and they don’t sparkle!” 🚫✨

I hope you’ll love Caaisho as much as you do Noosh. She is also a kick-ass strong woman, who will be bringing a very fresh attitude to dealing with the am’r and their vampiric shenanigans. Bagamil had wanted the am’r world to be shaken up a bit…but none of them are expecting Caaisho! (Here’s how to pronounce it, BTW)

Stay tuned to this channel 📺 to get to know this new character better as I finally get Book IV written for you 📝

The Winners Love Their Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Thanks to the first three of you who wrote in wanting to help me figure out shipping for the bookmarks—and I’m so pleased with how much you all love them 🔖💞

JT was kind enough to share this image 🥰

Happily, I found out that with the new small bubble mailers I bought, and how light the bookmarks are, that I can request it to be sent “First Class — non-machinable” and it costs less than a dollar to ship, so I can ship these for FREE!

Which I also can do if they are included in packages with books in, obviously! So if you have a friend who needs a signed copy of any of the books in the series (or if you are filling in your library), don’t worry that throwing one of these beauties in will up your shipping costs—they won’t!

Stained Glass Bookmark Blood Demands

These gorgeous — and durable — acrylic bookmarks will take your reading experience to the next level! They are 5″ x 1.875″ — a perfect size for every book in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series — or any other book in your collection. And they won’t add any weight to your bookbag. The artwork is a “stained glass” FREE SHIPPING!

immoralinfluence.myshopify.com/products/stained-glass-bookmark-blood-demands

And now for a word from this week’s sponsor:

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Vampires have tails!

My Bizarreries segment is still running over in Warren Ellis’ newsletter Orbital Operations. You should go check it out, because he has really excellent recommendations for books, comics, music, and really random cool shit. I actually buy stuff based on his recs!

Click here to read the whole thing

OK, I think that’s enough for this week—I know you’d rather I be writing the next novel, so I’ll hit “publish” and get back to my proper work! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

We started the annual Villantine’s Day celebration with the Baddest Bad Guy of the series: Kurgan. As we ramp up to releasing the audiobook of Blood Eternal this year, I wanted to bring back the first batch of Villaintine’s cards back for a rematch ⚔️

The winner last time was “The things I’ll do to your heart, Valentine” — and while I do love the threatening nature of that one, I also love both the other options just as much…

The results from the first round…

Also, there are a lot more readers of this newsletter now than when I first ran this poll, so I think it’s only right that I run this one again, and let our new friends have their input on this deeply important matter. So here are your choices:

OK, now, here’s the poll. Let the best card win!

If you would like any of the images to send to friends, just let me know and I will send you the image, sized for easy email sharing 💌

I’ll announce the winner in the next newsletter, so stay tuned to this great channel 📺

Something kinda exciting has happened 💥

I now have a wee guest spot over at Warren Ellis’ newsletter (the comic book writer, novelist, and screenwriter), sharing “Raven Belasco’s Bizarreries” every week. His newsletter is one of the few I make time for regularly (along with Cecilia Tan’s and Tiffany Trent’s) so I recommend it highly to you.

This is the first one! Follow Orbital Operations to read the further ones!

Book Recommendation: Bound by the Blood 🩸🩸🩸

Two members of The Big Glasses Brigade 🤓

So, you all know my life has been subsumed by becoming the caregiver to my mother and needing to move in with her for the foreseeable future. But I did manage to get out yesterday to my salon for a very overdue haircut and color, and then after that to Cecilia’s book launch, which was conveniently at my beloved Pandemonium Books

I just frickin’ adore Cecilia. She is one of those people I can talk for hours with and then, when we have to go do other things, be sad because the conversation felt all-too-short.

Getting to be friends with Cecilia is one of the wonderful perks of having become an author. I’ve been a fan of C. Tan since, I dunno, college or right after? Pretty sure I found her in Blue Blood Magazine? This is a person whom I idolized from afar, and who I now get to be friends with?! I am a writer for many reasons … but the perk of getting to hang out with authors you adore is not to be sneezed at 😉

There was real excitement about this book, which is described as “An Urban Fantasy BDSM Romantic Suspense“ (so if you like those things, GO GET IT)

It’s on the top of my to-read pile, but you don’t need my review, because Cecilia has only gone and gotten a review from Anne Muthafuckin’ Rice’s son (I’m what you could call painfully jealous) and I probably couldn’t do a better review than this anyway:

If you haven’t voted, scroll back up and do so! And until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

As you will recall from the last email, my entire life has been thrown up in the air, as I have moved in with my mom to become her caregiver as we try to get her to be able to walk again. More about that later in the email, but I have finally started to move my office into her home, and get set up to do direct sales from her house, and all the stuff an indie author needs 😮‍💨

So I can finally share our incredible new reader swag: Stained Glass Bookmarks!

Everyone’s favorite cover!

I am totally in love with this one!

I wanted to present these gorgeous bookmarks to you all set and ready to go, but I am missing one vital piece of information for our Shopify store: how much USPS will charge for shipping them! I’m used to dealing with getting the books out, but for orders of just these amazing bookmarks by themselves, I have no idea what it will cost 🤔

So it’s giveaway time! 🎁

The first three people who email me and request either the Blood Ex Libris or Blood Demands bookmark will get their order for FREE, and you’ll be doing me a favor, as I both need to find out how much they cost to ship, and also get to know the local post office where I’m now living.

🆓 Email me and tell me which bookmark you want – you might win a free one!

I honestly can’t tell which one I like best!

Argh! They are so good! 🤩

OK, that’s all the business stuff for this email, keep reading if you just want to keep up with me, or go on about your day 🙂

It’s been a FUCKING INSANE two weeks since last I wrote to you. I’ve moved from my house into my mom’s guest bedroom (and office!) The first week, she was in terrible pain, and everything was a huge, exhausting production, and I spent every moment of the day attending to her and trying to get her life back in some kind of order, as well as doctor’s appointments and PT.

At the end of the second week, due to some useful pain management, we are doing a little better. I am hopeful that I might be able to get a few hours each day to myself to write and do the other business of being a writer.

Never have I wished that the am’r would pay me a visit more. Seeing what aging is putting my mom through is terrible, and as rough and violent as the am’r world is, getting old as a kee is a billion times harder…

If you have elderly people in your life, give them a call and tell them that they are superheroes who kick ass each day in the face of all that an aging body is throwing at them, and how unhelpful health care can be, and how poorly society in general treats the elderly 🦸‍♀️

OK, that all said, next month is going to have some far more exciting emails coming out to you. Because our annual Villiantine’s Day has not been forgotten! And even more exciting news to follow that…!

Archie helping me write this newsletter on my mom’s sofa

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff

Hey Fabulous Readers!

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the January newsletters aren’t going to be quite as thrilling as I had planned. My Mom had a serious health situation back in October, and she isn’t recovering well. I needed to pack up myself and Archie and move in with her for a while to help her with physical therapy and all the stuff she needs to get back on her feet — literally!

However, this means I’m away from my office, and most of my time and energy will be going to helping out my mom, not doing cool stuff for the books. So all planned stuff has been abruptly moved to February, and thus the two January newsletters are not going to be packed full with all the exciting stuff that was previously scheduled.

What this means for you is actually not bad news, because I will only have my laptop with me, and there’s not much I can do on my laptop except work on my next novel. So in between physical therapy sessions and stuff, I will be full steam ahead on Blood Depths, without other business distractions getting in the way. Since I know this is what you all want most from me, well, like I said, not bad news for you!

I was thinking about what to do with these two “lost newsletters” for this month while I was walking Archie this morning, and I decided what I could give you during this time-period was a couple “getting to know Raven” deep dives, since that’s always something you Fantabulous Newsletter Readers seem to enjoy.

But first, for those of you who were too busy to go grab the Sandu Xmas story, it’s ready and waiting for you — and has gotten some great reviews so far 🥰

To start us off, here’s… How You Build A Bookworm

The seeds for my eventually being the writer you know today were planted very early. My mom read me Lord of the Rings when I was five years old, and it definitely gave me a standard of what to expect from reading, one that the public school system was not prepared for.

And I wanted to read! I came home crying from the first day of kindergarten, and my mom, very worried, asked, “What happened at school?” And I responded, “I didn’t learn how to read!”

Eventually, the alphabet had been banged into my brain, and I was reading sentences. I was not enjoying those sentences, because the school was giving me books like Gordon the Goat. Now, Gordan was not having The Battle of Five Armies or engaging with dragons, or visiting Lothlorien. As I recall, the highlight of Gordon’s day was eating a tin can. Not very compelling stuff.

The next family story about me and reading comes when my mom was called into school because I was failing reading comprehension, in first grade. They were giving us these cards with a story on one side, and questions about the story on the other side. I was answering those questions not just wrong, but like I was on drugs at that tender age.

Luckily for me, the first grade teacher cared about her students, and she had taken time to ask me some questions, and had figured out that I had read the stories on the front of the cards, thought they were deeply stupid, had rewritten them in my head to be better stories, and was then answering the questions based on my far superior narratives 😂

That was probably the last time my mom got called in for any issues with reading or writing, because it very soon became clear that I was having troubles with math, and that became the issue for the rest of my schooling. Since girls weren’t expected to be good at math anyway, nobody troubled to notice that I am dyscalculic. My mom was regularly told, “She can follow the logic of the word problems, then she just gets lazy with the math part.” 🙄

So math became something I dreaded and did as little of as possible, and reading became my escape.

I needed the escape because from second grade on, I was rated as a glasses-wearing nerd, a bookworm and general loser. I was picked last in gym, I had no friends, and basically was a living example of a character from Revenge of the Nerds.

The glasses really were the final nail in my social coffin…

I avoided dealing with those issues by reading every fantasy book that would hold still long enough, making no distinction between juvenile lit and adult fantasy novels. (Starting things off with Lord of the Rings had really ruined me for reading at my age level.) For a nerd, I got very bad grades, because during class I was often holding a fantasy novel under my desk and reading it instead of paying attention.

All of this, of course, was excellent preparation for being a writer later. I agree with Robert Heinlein that “Writing can be learned, but not taught.” I think the best thing anyone can do who wants to be a writer is to read voraciously, through all genres and styles of writing. Doing that not only exposes you to incredible examples of writing, but also shows you how to do every aspect of writing. More importantly, it also teaches you how NOT to do things. If you are reading something and think a character is intolerable or the plot is slow and uncompelling, well, there you go, there’s an example of how not to write! 😁

I could talk about this forever, but this is definitely long enough for a newsletter! For those of you who made it to this point, you are fucking amazing and I appreciate you 🥰

To all my readers, I hope your 2026 has started a bit more smoothly than mine, but at any rate, I look forward to being in contact with you twice a month in the year to come. Please feel free to respond to the newsletters (just hit reply, it’s that easy!) and chat with me about stuff. (There is starting to be a bigger readership, but I’m still at the point where I am accessible to you all. If my plans work out, there will come a day when you write to me and get a reply from my personal assistant who will tell you I appreciate your email but am too busy to respond personally — but since we aren’t there yet, take advantage of it 😉)

Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

Interview with the Vagabond King

That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Listen to the series as you do other stuff