Allison Temple's Blog

My parents live on the St. Lawrence River, the seaway through which all the cargo gathered in the Great Lakes travels to the Atlantic Ocean. When you sit on their front porch in the evening, you can watch the sun set on America. The sky goes grey around you, but the southern shoreline stays brightly lit. It’s like looking into another world. Peering through a pane of glass to someone who can neither see nor hear you, and doesn’t quite yet know the day is done.

I’m at a writer’s retreat in the summer of 2022. The first time my friends and I have been together indoors in over two years. Mom and Dad have left us their house with its ocean-bound views for the weekend. We talk about what it’s been like. Stories we’ve shared over Zoom and standing six feet apart on someone’s lawn. Now we share them huddled together, watching the sky turn grey and gold.

Someone says something about how Death must have been very busy the last few years. Illness, age, injury. Lives end every day. And now there are more. All the people who fought COVID and lost.

And I—never one to let a dark moment stay somber—said “I bet you Death missed a couple meeting invites in the last two years.”

There have to have been a few. People who were teetering on the brink. The doctors weren’t quite sure if they’d stay or go. Today. No, wait, tomorrow. The ending kept getting rescheduled and somewhere along the way, Death forgot to log into Outlook and missed the update. Dying is so unpredictable. You log out at 5 pm on Friday, then log back in on Monday to find out Agnes finally went on Saturday afternoon, and no one let you know. If I were Death, I would be pissed. I have KPIs to hit and Agnes is making it hard.

That plot bunny wouldn’t leave me alone. We had been surrounded by death for two years. And I had been grieving longer.

On October 1, 2018, my Nana couldn’t get out of bed. Two days later, my mom called me, teary, and said Nana would be going to oncology in Kingston. Then she called back the next day and said there was a new plan. Nana had already lived more than 86 years. She’d had a long marriage. Children, grandchildren and even a few great grandkids. Family dinners with her legendary roast beef. Pea soup and plum jam recipes carefully passed down. She’d been a widow for 22 years. She was good. She was done.

By October 16, she was gone. There was a new program in Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying (or MAID). She’d heard about it on the CBC. She was ready. She picked the date and time and said goodbye.

Here’s the thing. Nana with cancer in the hospital? That’s sad. People tell you they’re so sorry. They ask if you need anything. How are you doing?

Nana with cancer in the hospital and she’s dying on Tuesday at 2 pm? It’s kinda funny. Or at least, the shocked look on people’s faces, when they ask how you’re doing and you say, “I’m okay. Just waiting for Tuesday. 2 pm. Everyone is coming.” Like it’s a piano recital. The can’t-miss event of the social season. Yeah. The look on people’s faces is pretty funny.

Death has received the meeting invite, has blocked off the time in their calendar and will be ready to go on Tuesday at 2. Maybe 2:15 if Aunt Lois gets stuck in traffic.

So four years later, as we were watching the sunset and I said “Death must have missed a few meeting invites” I wasn’t talking in hypotheticals. I was talking about Nana. I was talking about the bureaucracy of dying. The paperwork and signatures, the waiting periods, the phone calls, the endless back and forth with faceless institutions who can see the account has been closed and the final pension cheque was never deposited, but they’ll still need it sent back to them, like a slip of paper with a dead lady’s name on it is more important than the feelings of a grieving family who just lost its matriarch.

You have to laugh, because eventually you run out of tears to cry.

Afterlife Incorporated isn’t a series about grief. It’s really more about life. It’s about how hard we struggle, just to get buried in paperwork, even when we’re gone and our loved ones have to unbury themselves while dealing with a system that has never quite figured out how these last steps should go.

Death isn’t mysterious. It’s more of the same. Procedures. Waiting games. Never quite having enough words to say what you really mean, even with time running out. It’s also orange cats (the question of who would take Nana’s anxious shih tzu was a multi-generational debate), emails that get sent and never replied to, things that seemed so important until you can’t leave your house or hug your friends. Until the only thing left is to watch the sunset and laugh.

Nana’s last words were supposed to be “Thank you all for being here.”

But then the doctor said, “We’ll start with a sedative. You might snore a little.”

And her last words became, “Oh no. I never snore.”

And just like that, Death showed up exactly when it was supposed to.

Afterlife Incorporated is a trilogy. Book 3, Vacation From Hell, is already booked in the calendar.

The Love Archives brings together 120 bestselling romance authors with new exclusive bonus scenes and excerpts. All proceeds support Operation Olive Branch and Palestinian relief efforts. More details to follow, but pre-order today!

June is here and with it comes Pride. If you’re in Ontario, I’ll be joining authors like Hudson Lin and Jenn Burke on a tour of Pride festivals around the province. We’re selling books and bookish swag and we’d love to see you.

If you can’t make it, then maybe we can interest you in a book fair or two? All my backlist books are 50% off this month, and along with a bunch of other queer fiction and romance authors, we’ve got a book fair for every flavour! You can check them all out below!

Have you read Under Her Roof? Love podcasts? Come listen to me, Layla Reyne and Cari Zee as we talk all things Accidentally Undercover, badass grandmas, and secret messages in my chicken wings. Thanks to Jeff Adams and The Big Gay Fiction Podcast for hosting us!

Back when I started considering publishing, in the dark ages of 2016, one of the immediate pieces of advice I got was to start marketing now. Never mind that I had nothing to sell yet. Start creating a presence they said. Open a Facebook account. Build a newsletter. So I did. And for a while it was great. I made friends on Twitter. I got invited to parties and takeovers on Facebook. Eventually I opened Instagram and Tiktok accounts. I jumped into the hustle with both feet.

But eight years later, I question how much social media sells books. Sure, it’s one more chance for people to find you, but I’m not sure the cost is worth it. Twitter was terrible for my mental health almost from the beginning. Facebook is aging and these days my feed is more recommendations for random lifestyle pages I might like (spoiler: I don’t). Instagram…I don’t know. The implication always seems to be if you don’t get engagement on your Instagram, it’s because you’re doing it wrong.

I left Twitter a few years ago, long before the great Musk Meltdown of 2023. I went mini viral on Tiktok for a hot minute last year. But I also had my FB privileges revoked for no obvious reason on the very same day Destination Bedding came out, which seriously hampered my ability to tell people about the release. And Instagram prioritizes reels over photos now, but it blacklists content you make for Tiktok and migrate to Instagram. Make video content! No! Not like that. You’re doing it wrong!

So at the end of last year I decided it was time for a hiatus. No more Instagram or Facebook for the month of January. I’m just not sure what value it’s bringing to my life these days. When the month is over? We’ll see.

Except, it’s already been a week and holy moly. Was I really spending that much time doom scrolling? Just popping in to the app one more time to see if there were any new notifications since the last time I checked? It didn’t feel like a lot, but I guess it was, because with the time I didn’t spend in the Metaverse this weekend, I assembled an exercise bike and recorded two podcast episodes.

Yup, you read that right. I started a podcast. The common wisdom about social media marketing these days (as opposed to back in 2016 when the advice was to be everywhere all the time) is find the channels you enjoy and make great content there. I’ve been noodling around how to make content for my other great love — Korean TV dramas — for a while, and my (possibly) temporary departure from Facebook and Instagram finally gave me the a chance to start planning content and open some channels.

So 8 days into 2024, I’m pleased to announce the launch of Kdramas for Writers! It’s available in both a Substack newsletter and a Spotify podcast. Each episode will take a look at a Kdrama I’m currently watching, and talk about how we can use the storytelling techniques in them to write better novels.

A niche market? Yeah, I know. But it combines the two things I spend a lot of time thinking about, and I can’t be the only one.

Wanna check it out? Got a Kdrama you love that you want to talk about? Subscribe through Substack or Spotify or leave a comment here to start a conversation!

Hello world! I wanted to let you now that over the next few months I’m going to be pulling some of my books from KU and moving them to all platforms. It’s a move that makes sense for me as an author and where my career is headed and I’m excited to connect with new readers who weren’t able to read some of these books while they were in KU over the last few years.

Pretty much all my MM romances (see exceptions below). These were all released in KU first and have been there for a number of years. Since I haven’t released much new MM while I’ve been focusing on the pirate books, these romances have run their course with the KU algorithm and it’s time to give them new life.

All three of The Pirate & Her Princess books are staying in KU for now. I may move them in the new year. 

Puppuccino and Destination Bedding are staying for now too. These are attached to larger shared series in KU, so moving them at this time doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Over the next few months. KU runs on a 90-day renewal cycle, so I have a few books that I’ve set to not renew at the end of their 90 days. Up North, Boyfriend With Benefits, and the Out & About books will move around July 15. By mid-September the Seacroft books and The Pick Up will all be wide.

I really appreciate everyone who has loved these books when they were released. If you’re a KU subscriber and haven’t read all of the books that are moving, you’ve still got time, and any books that you’ve downloaded will stay available on your Kindle until you return them, even after they’ve been pulled from KU. 

As a newbie author venturing into self publishing, KU was a great platform to cut my teeth on. Now, though, I’m ready to take a new step now, publishing on platforms that work better for the types of stories I want to tell and the pace at which I publish.

Hello world! I wanted to let you now that over the next few months I’m going to be pulling some of my books from KU and moving them to all platforms. It’s a move that makes sense for me as an author and where my career is headed and I’m excited to connect with new readers who weren’t able to read some of these books while they were in KU over the last few years.

Pretty much all my MM romances (see exceptions below). These were all released in KU first and have been there for a number of years. Since I haven’t released much new MM while I’ve been focusing on the pirate books, these romances have run their course with the KU algorithm and it’s time to give them new life.

All three of The Pirate & Her Princess books are staying in KU for now. I may move them in the new year. 

Puppuccino and Destination Bedding are staying for now too. These are attached to larger shared series in KU, so moving them at this time doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Over the next few months. KU runs on a 90-day renewal cycle, so I have a few books that I’ve set to not renew at the end of their 90 days. Up North, Boyfriend With Benefits, and the Out & About books will move around July 15. By mid-September the Seacroft books and The Pick Up will all be wide.

I really appreciate everyone who has loved these books when they were released. If you’re a KU subscriber and haven’t read all of the books that are moving, you’ve still got time, and any books that you’ve downloaded will stay available on your Kindle until you return them, even after they’ve been pulled from KU. 

As a newbie author venturing into self publishing, KU was a great platform to cut my teeth on. Now, though, I’m ready to take a new step now, publishing on platforms that work better for the types of stories I want to tell and the pace at which I publish.

I am a deep and well-established introvert, but one of the things I’m really happy about in this late-COVID era is that we can have in-person book events again. The last time I went to a signing, Hot Potato had just been released. Hot Potato! So many new and fun books since then.

I’ve got two in-person events booked for this year and the first one is coming very soon. Romancing the Falls includes a book signing, dinner and dance party in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Yup, it’s the honeymoon capital of the world and I’ll be there!

Because I’m never very good at estimating how many books to bring to signings like this, I’ve set up a pre-order shop here on my website. If you’re coming and want to be 100% sure the books you want will be there too, pre-ordering is the best way to do that. You also get access to special pre-conference pricing! Pre-orders close on April 23, so get on it today.

If you want to join us on May 20, buy a ticket today. The General Admission ticket will get you into the signing, while the GA All Day ticket includes the dinner and after party.

The bookstore is open! If you’ve been waiting for Unleashed to be ready, the time to order your signed paperbacks is now! Pre-orders are open. I’m waiting on my first batch to arrive from the printers and will ship the complete series out ASAP!

The bookstore is open! If you’ve been waiting for Unleashed to be ready, the time to order your signed paperbacks is now! Pre-orders are open. I’m waiting on my first batch to arrive from the printers and will ship the complete series out ASAP!