Blog

Apparently, I have been epically failing with promoting and maintaining my books and website! I’ve just been too busy writing, working my bill-paying job/getting a new one, and living life. “Keep On” was actually the little motto I wrote for myself on my January 1, 2022 5k run, and I’ve got to say, I’ve definitely maintained that mindset this year!

So… In 2020, I published book 2 of the Haven Ansley Porter series – Trapped By Chaos. If slightly more adult themes that’s leaning a bit more toward romance is up your alley, you should check it out! It starts to delve into more non-traditional romances and roles, but nothing too crazy.

In November of 2022, I published book 3 of the Haven Ansley Porter – Escape – and have done absolutely zero promotion about it, much less announced it anywhere until today! That’s all on me and life running away with me. This series has officially become a behind-closed-doors, slow-burn, reverse harem, LGBTQ+ friendly series, so keep that in mind if you venture into it.

I’ve actually got book 4 written already, have a printed author copy in my hands, and am doing edits in my free time – I just haven’t had a lot of free time to focus on it just yet, hence my excitement about the upcoming holidays and time off of the bill-paying job!

Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well, getting some reading in and having a pleasant year. I know the world went super-sideways for a while and it’s still tripping over its own feet about a lot of things, but I do hope you’re able to find some comfort in reading.

Take care, and since I know I won’t log in before then, Happy New Year!

~D. J. Humphries

My new book “Essence” is out now! I did make it so that if you buy the print copy through Amazon, you can get the digital copy for free! Links on where to purchase available on my Books Page.

This is a bit of a new thing for me, less YA, slightly more adult themes and a few less traditional ideas floating around in this world but I love it and am already deep into writing book 2 in this series!

Wolf Queen – Perri’s Story and Arianna’s Tale & Perri’s Story Boxset are now available! (details on where to purchase available on my Books page)

I am super excited to announce that Wolf Queen – Perri’s Story is finally finished and available for purchase, not only because Perri was one of my favorite characters in the original Arianna’s Tale trilogy, and not even just because it was supposed to be a novella but Perri had a lot more story to give than I could squish into a novella… But also because this all spurred from the fact that my niece, Perri, asked me to include her in my books. I never knew that (loosely) basing a character off of my beautiful, amazing niece would bring such stories to life and I am thrilled to share these with you!

As always, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave reviews! We self-published authors live off of our online reviews – they let other potential readers get a little better insight into whether or not they’ll like the story, and they give us writers feedback from our beloved readers!

Congrats to my giveaway winner Abbie Lu who will be getting this box of goodies on Monday! Thank you to all who entered! It was enough fun for me I just might have to do it again sometime soon 😜

Keep reading!!

Well all, I am extremely apologetic for my disappearance over the past few months!

I have been keeping up the most with my Twitter since tossing off a 150 character message is much easier than writing any sort of actual entry. Since I decided to go back to school for a second degree full time and work full time, plus I’ve made sure to start going to the gym at least twice a week and need to actually spend time writing my books, keep house, and spend time with my kitties! As I’m sure you can imagine, that hasn’t left me with very much time to be on my blog or promoting or anything…

The “good” news? I’ve written A LOT both on my Perri novella and my Ghost Hunter novel (from NaNoWriMo)-though I wish they would quit fighting for attention in my brain and let me finish one of them and then the other… Ah well, writer’s life, right? But seriously, the Ghost Hunter book kept me up until almost 2am with a great idea the other night and I had to be at work at 8am – I was running on fumes and caffeine all day (but still made it to the gym somehow O.o)

The cool news: while I wasn’t looking because my life got so busy, I got over 1,000 followers on Twitter!

I’ve decided I’m going to do a of signed copies of my trilogy but I’m not going to limit it to just Twitter, so check back on Friday for more information (if you’re interested)! 🙂

All I can tell you with certainty is that I’m definitely still writing my books, even though I do apologize that my social media is suffering from my busy schedule! I hope you all keep reading (and writing for those authors out there).

Hi all!

So as you can see (if you saw the old), I have definitely made some huge headway toward getting my website set up the way I want it to be 🙂 Thank you for your patience while I shift over to it being more website instead of only blog! I’m not thrilled with any of the Themes that WordPress is offering so I think I’m going to look into creating my own (yup, I’m that crazy person).

In the meantime, an anecdote…

At work the other day, one of the interns asked me where I get the inspiration for my books and I realized just how odd the answer to that question can be! Of course there’s the general “I had this really weird dream and remembered enough of it that it was the starting point for the story” (that one’s not unique), but the fact that I spun an entire book off of the way that the moonlight was playing on the skin of my arm through my blinds one night… that’s a little more odd! And this year’s NaNoWriMo novel is me taking the overarching idea I’d had for a book a while back, but I didn’t like where it had headed, so I’m keeping the main concepts and characters, and redoing it–but that entire setting popped in my head from driving around Indiana down this road where you’re running parallel to the train tracks with a small-ish strip of grass between the road and train tracks, and twice (only twice!) these two huge trees that look like they had been planted side-by-side ages ago pop up between you and the tracks, probably a couple of miles apart… What that has to do with ghost hunting and demons and mysterious deaths, I have no idea… but that’s where it led me!

Anyway! Thank you again for your patience as I continue working on my site! And Keep Reading!

Hi all!

I have decided to do a pretty massive overhaul to this site! It’s still a work in progress in my mind, so it’s going to take a little while to actually accomplish! Please be patient with me as I get it flipped around and changed! Also, please feel free to send out some suggestions (things you’d like to see, things you hate that I do, etc.). I know I don’t really have a lot of followers at this point, but I hope to get that in better order soon as well.

In the meantime, keep reading! If you’ve gotten book 1 or book 2 from smashwords, there’s a code in the back to get a discount on book 2 or book 3 because it’s Halloween month and I ❤ Halloween!

D. J. Humphries

So here’s the honest-to-goodness truth straight from this writer’s mind to her fingertips to your screen and into your head:

Writing can be really hard!

Even now that I have self-published my first trilogy, even now that I’ve got this great idea for a novella that focuses on the life of one of the not-main characters from my trilogy, sometimes I can’t just sit down and write what I want to!

This, right here, is me wanting to write, and feeling creative, but not about what I had planned on writing. I’ve got all of these great ideas for this novella, I’ve gotten probably a third of it written already, I know where it’s going and mostly how it’s going to get there, but some days, I just can’t seem to make myself stop and work on it.

This is probably one of those things that separates me from the really famous, popular, professional writers, but I can’t be sure! I dedicate some time each day to writing, but I’m not so professional about it that I always work on what I should be working on. Again, I’m writing a blog about writing being hard instead of working on the novella. I can’t fully explain why it happens, but, for me, it’s one of the reasons I almost always have more than one project running at a time.

Lately I’ve been wanting to go back to a story that I started last year (and dropped like a cold fish because I lost interest) and rework the whole thing with this new twist on it. I keep stopping and going “Wait… What? That story? I haven’t even thought about that story in MONTHS! Why do I want to work on that story?” All the while the ideas for the novella that I need to finish are playing around in my head and working themselves out.

My point got deleted! Ah, the age of the internet… Computers and their glitches… My point is something along the lines of don’t always be afraid of taking the step away from what you should be working on, whether to pursue another creative idea or just to get your mind off of it, sometimes the should work just needs to be shelved for a moment. Trust me, in the long run, your readers will probably appreciate the extra time you took to write it (even while they’re hating how long it took to come out) because the final project will be a true work of love!

Keep reading! And keep writing!

Book 3 of the Arianna’s Tale trilogy is now available!

Have the midweek blues…?

I know Wednesdays can be hard, but I have good news!

Book 3, Arianna’s Tale: The Resolution is NOW AVAILABLE!