Kayla Shay - Fanart, Fanfiction & More

Title: Caring For Your Dragon
Author: blueraccoon/rebecca
Rating: NC-17
Summary: They went home. Now they have to go back to real life. In which Will and Jean-Rene figure out how this mate thing works.
Notes: I said on AO3 it's been fascinating to watch this story come together because it involves people I've literally written millions of words about, but which have only been read by one person other than me. I found I kept having to pull out things where I'd added unnecessary filler exposition just to drop in details about people because I thought they were cool and wanted people to know the cool details. There were two entire passages that got yanked because they were tours of a house and another building and I was like "becc, come on, nobody wants to read that shit" so now they're in my side bits file and if you want to read those side bits let me know.

There will be more stories. I have the next two mostly written, and then some stuff after that, and things planned for future. It seems to have found a small but existing audience on AO3 so I'm happy about that, at least.

Title: Dragon's Mate
Author: rebecca/blueraccoon
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Will's never let himself look at any alphas with potential interest, although to be fair he hasn’t met any he’d want to consider either. Until now, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.
Notes: This takes place about 12 years after Clean Session but you don't really need to have read that for this to make sense.
Warnings: some discussion of pediatric cancer and some angst.

There are more stories in this universe that will get posted if people don't hate this one.

While I'm waiting for my manuscript to cool, I'm doing a short book marketing course that I bought to see if I can get my head around where the heck to find readers. I know I'm not doing a lot of marketing and I'm okay with that because my strategy right now is in the one hour of useful creative energy I have a day I want to get the writing done. The next book sells the previous one and all that. So the goal is to get this trilogy done, then lean into marketing hard for a while.

I've set up a foundation - I have a brand style, I'm on Instagram and have indie author friends. I have an email list. I have not... done much else. I don't even have freebies to get people to sign up for my newsletter (see above one (1) hour of functional creative energy per day.)

Hence this little course. It's basically all stuff I know from my day job. But it does have worksheets, and I'm a sucker for worksheets. 

So, since my target audience is exhausted, demoralized older millennials/borderline gen X whose hips and knees hurt, who are tired of their favorite characters dying and into competence porn, who like sci-fi and fantasy in the Gen and Bob flavors (me. it's me.), where do they hang out online?

I'm on Instagram and that's about it, because I can only handle one social channel at the moment. Is Bluesky the new Twitter? If I'm going to put energy into marketing, I want to be in the right place, because I sure as hell am not going to be able to do more than one or two channels. 

I have managed to go through all of the links I'd saved to Pocket. It was honestly interesting to work my way backwards through fannish interests (the big ones like Sherlock, MCU, SPN, Merlin, NCIS, SGA, Mag7, and DW/TW but also random ones I dipped into like Sleepy Hollow, SouthLAnd, Haven and so many more) via fics and anon meme comments saved, different research rabbit holes, and general hobby interests. Out of the 1.5-2k links I've kept a little over 300 or so (many articles/fics were read but didn't need to be kept and probably at least half the links were dead). About half those kept were genealogy links-I used to be massively interested in that but mostly researched backwards as much as possible (quite far for a few ancestors including some of hub's to late 1600s/early 1700s Sweden on his dad's side and his mom's to 1500/1600 France->Quebec; many of mine I can't trace before they arrive in the US 1900ish but there's a few I've traced back to late 1700s/early 1800s in the Pale of Jewish Settlement) - generally I've lost the shine of the whole search process but I kept the links just in case. The other half is pretty random, but includes a good dozen or two things I'll be adding to various of my useful links posts so keep an eye out for that.

The Hurt/Comfort Exchange announced due to unclaimed pinch hits (there were still two unclaimed last time I checked) that there will be a delay in opening so instead of going live tomorrow, it'll be July 4th. Kind of bummed about that.

I've made two more rugs out of prepped strips I'd made a few weeks back:

a big, give or take 37" by 27" rusty batik(ish) one and

a smaller, 27.5" by 17" ish blue/green plaid and grey one, out of the rest of the strips left over from the rug I posted about 2 weeks ago and a pair of old grey flannel sleep pants

I'm pretty much out of places I can put rugs here, but I still have lots of prepped strips and whatnot. Not sure what I'll do about that.

Here's two week's worth of tumblr art recs at recthething (due South, DMBJ, Doctor Who, Guardian, MDZD/Untamed and Merlin):

due South
- Let’s pretend the Rays are in the basement of an all girls school again okay (hilarious would-be reaction of the Rays responding to Fraser, and his action, in the ep he was posing as Ms Fraser)

DMBJ
- The coolest guy ever (absolutely incredible art of Reboot's version of Hei Xiazi)
- Zhang Qiling doodle (amazing take on UN's Xiao Yulang's Xiaoge photoshoot)

Doctor Who
- Two (absolutely darling)

Guardian
- Something dramatic for Weilan (this is incredible and so tender)

MDZS/The Untamed
- Modern mdzs series: 1) Wei Ying, 2) Lan Zhan, 3) Wen Ning, 4) Wen Qing, and 5) Jiang Cheng. (Love the whole series, especially Lan Zhan and Wen Ning's looks)
- sometimes I think about older Mianmian meeting Jin Ling and I just. have to take a moment (a comic/bit of animation with a little meta/thoughts about Mianmian and Jin Ling, hits you in the feels)

Merlin
- Treating myself with some soft Merthur (tender, beautiful kisses)
- my first offering to the merlin fandom, good god i'm so obsessed. look at what i've done to my boy. (amazing use of color and lighting in this)
- (tw suggestive) Lap dance (yes, good, thank you)