Winter On My Mind

Food preparations, gift wrapping, laundry, my twin’s birthday, packing overnight bags, picking up dog food…these are a few things on my mind this week, and sadly none of them are writing related.

I knew the holiday time between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years would be busy, but I naively thought I’d be able to write. I wasn't prepared for a few days to have gone by since I’ve had the time, or been home long enough, to open up my laptop.

Now I seriously understand every author who has said they don’t write during the holiday season. But I’m not beating myself up over it. It is what it is. I’ve also got a lingering bug that I caught at a family Christmas, so I’m choosing salt baths and hydration over pushing myself for words. I'm choosing to winter.

Yes, I'm wintering. That idea that we need seasons same as our environment. Winter is the time of year for salt baths, cozying up on the couch with a warm cuppa, quiet nights at home with loved ones. It's restorative and does wonders for the brain. If you haven't done any wintering yet, I highly suggest it! 

My imagination hasn’t taken time off yet, my plot continues to grow in my mind. So I’ve got that going for me. 

I hope your holiday preparations aren’t driving you crazy and that you either get time with your own words or turn some pages with someone else’s! 

Merry Christmas!

A Peaceful Pause

 This Week's Topic: On My Mind, the Winter Edition

It's the time of year when I give myself permission to not write, to pause marketing analysis, and to back off ad management. There's no guilt for missing word-count goals. No stress over skipping editing pages. My book discounts and winter ad campaigns were launched at the beginning of the month and are slated to run through the end of January (yes, I do winter campaigns versus holy day campaigns).  I check my sales mostly because it's a habit and not because I will do anything to adjust campaigns.

When writing full-time--or any type of self-employment--we often forget to give ourselves permission to take a break. As creatives, it's imperative we step back, step away, and step into a place of regeneration and relaxation. Too many of us attempt to keep our work schedules during times of the year that we know will demand a lot of us outside our fictional worlds. Whether it's family obligations, religious observations, charity deliverables, or community interactions, the end of the calendar year is exceptionally taxing. Fighting the inevitable isn't worth my health or my sanity. Thus, I give myself permission to set aside my writing--both the creation and the business--to participate in the season of giving. Giving my time, my emotion, and my cooperation to those who've supported me throughout the year. 

Now, now, I don't give away all my time. I still maintain my restful hours. I even claim a few extras. Because, as stimulating as it is to reconnect with loved ones, it's also exhausting. This recluse can only handle so much of...people.

This winter, dear readers, I wish you the serenity of a peaceful pause.

Ridiculous Cute Crow

On my mind - ridiculous cute. To manage migraine, I do yoga nidra at noon each day. Most of the time, this is a solitary endeavor. Yesterday, it was not. I developed -- a growth.

Crow decided to climb into my tee shirt with me. My fluffy black 17lb marshmallow cat flopped over between my side and my arm. He pillowed his head on my shoulder and 'assisted' with my  nervous system reset.

Except.

When my session ended and I need to get up and go back to work, we came to disagreement. My furry son declined to rise. He also declined to relinquish my shirt.

Thus it is that rather than distress the sizeable feline, I risked an indecent exposure charge. Only briefly. I was outdoors, but  inside the lanai when I shimmied out of that tee shirt and grabbed a blanket from the porch swing and got it around me to get inside. Good thing it wasn't yard work day.

I found myself another tee shirt to wear for the rest of the day. 

My first one remained a place of feline refuge.

I suppose there's something to be said for being someone's sense of safety. 

One final photo of a happy, ridiculous Crow cat below.

What's On My Mind

I wish I had something sexier for you. I don't. What's on my mind is Covid. Not just because it's surging in the US and around the world but because it came in my door 14 days ago. It got Mom first. Then it go the rest of us. We did the Paxlovid thing and are dealing with the rebound now. Y'all. There have been SO many runs to Urgent Care. It's silly. Anyway. You know why I missed last week. I felt like hot garbage. I'm feeling better than that, now, but this rebound nonsense is zero fun. 0/10 do not recommend. 

So. Stay safe out there. We masked everywhere that wasn't home and it wasn't enough to keep us safe. Thankfully, so far, my father (the objectively most vulnerable) is the one skating this with the fewest issues. Anyway. Look out for yourselves and your loved ones. I wish this on no one.

Best Laid Plans and Magical News!

I had Plans for today's blog post here at the SFF Seven. But we know what the poet said about best-laid plans...

Yes, my day has gang agley. 

All in a good way, though. I got a lot done. Important stuff, just not quite the several steps required to post what I hoped to post today. So the short and dirty update is:

• TWISTED MAGIC will have a release date and preorder link soon!! (Though you can already preorder it on my website.)
• Of my new book that I've been writing, the one I wasn't supposed to be writing, but that insisted on being written, which I've been calling ONEIRA, Agent Sarah said: "You’ve crafted your very own fairytale, Jeffe and it’s magic."
• We strategized today, so look for more news on ONEIRA soon! And on TWISTED MAGIC!

Photo Credit: Pexels

As the release of my debut, A Realm of Ash and Shadow, draws near, there are three things I’ve learned over this past year that I’d love to share with other authors at the same stage of this journey as I am.

3 Things I Learned as a Debut Author

Learn to Slow Down

You’re going to be pushed and pulled in many directions. It’s inevitable. But you need to learn how to slow down. You can take time for yourself and recharge in the ways that recharge you best. Sometimes that’s self-care; other times, that’s losing yourself while drafting another book.

For me, it’s Saturdays on the couch with a book or binge-watching a show with my husband. Maybe for you, it’s Tuesday nights on Fortnite, or it’s Thursday mornings at Target.

Whatever it is, slow down and relish in the peace of it.

Embrace Rejection

Often, writers believe that once you sign with an agent or sell your book and you’re finally, FINALLY, being published, the rejections just… end. They don’t. They keep coming, and staying positive can be hard when you’re constantly being told no. Or when you’ve put in so much effort to market your debut, and you don’t make any lists. Or when you host a book event with twenty empty seats.

Or when negative reviews inevitably come in, and it feels like a personal attack.

I remember the first one-star review I ever received on my debut A Realm of Ash and Shadow. My chest felt tight, and my cheeks were hot. It was brutal. But I let it hurt, leaned on my husband and writer friends, and then I… got over it.

Not everyone will love your book, and it’s best to accept that sooner rather than later.

Create A Routine

Amidst all the hecticness of debuting, you will want to create a routine. Currently, I’m fortunate enough to freelance part-time while I focus on my career as an author. But it wasn’t always like this for me. Before I cut back on my client work, I was working full-time, drafting a sequel, and going through the entire pre-publication process for my debut.

It was so incredibly draining that I had to make cuts somewhere.

So, I cut back on my client work and forced myself into a routine that looked like this:

Morning:

Before I even start my working day, I enjoy some me-time! I take a long walk with my dog, brew coffee, and scroll on social media. Then, I dive into client work. I spend about three hours doing as much as I can to get all of my client work finished because I can’t focus on debuting or drafting if I have other deadlines looming over me.

Midday:

I always, always, try to remember to eat lunch. Sometimes I think I’m a workaholic, and I can sustain myself on iced coffee. It’s not good for me. (It’s not good for anyone, really.) Then, after lunch, I start working on all things debut. This looks like answering emails, creating social media graphics, calling indie bookstores to see if they’ll stock my book, etc. I also focus on building my author platform. So much goes into debuting that it’s hard to keep up.

Afternoon:

Once I’ve done everything on my schedule for my debut, it’s time to sprint! I most look forward to this part of my day because I love drafting and working on my craft.

All that to say, not every day goes perfectly. Sometimes there are fires I have to put out for my clients, and it cuts into the time I’ve allotted to draft. Sometimes I end up deviating from my routine altogether. But I always go back to my routine because it allows me to set boundaries and focus on what’s most important during those time frames instead of stressing about everything all the time.

Compartmentalizing is the best!

All this to say… you can and will survive your debut year as an author!

I hope these three things I learned as a debut author are helpful. Do you have any tips for debuting? I’d love to hear them! Feel free to comment below or come let me know over on Instagram @laraonfire.

Lara Buckheit is the author of A Realm of Ash and Shadow: https://books2read.com/aroaas. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Communications from Wilmington University, is a 2021 WriteMentor Mentee, an avid writer (and reader) of spice, and one time she met Taylor Swift's dad. She started writing at a very young age, mostly fanfiction centered around women with swords and men with devilish grins. And she hasn't stopped since. When not writing, Lara can be found drinking tea, hustling for her day job, and reading from her endless TBR pile. Lara currently lives in Charlottesville, VA, with her husband, dog, and thirteen houseplants named after fictional characters.

What I'm Learning

 I was referred to a biofeedback specialist who is training me to state shift. Shifting from fight or flight states to relaxed but alert states. NSDR / Yoga Nidra are the method by which that shift happens. The video is a 10 minute NSDR session designed to shift you out of your head and into your body for a little while. You reset your nervous system, restore energy, and heighten focus. If you suffer chronic pain, this is also a balm that might not cure all the discomfort, but which will certainly lower the volume a little.

 

 

 

 Yoga Nidra is another version of NSDR (so is self hypnosis). If you need a longer break or a longer session to help draw down pain or high stress, you can find sessions as long or as short as you like. I like Ally Boothroyd's ad-free channel.She offers an array of yoga nidra sessions.

 

Biofeedback is teaching me that all this time, I've been doing life wrong. Turns out you're supposed to rest. The modern worship of business and SO MUCH WORK TO DO is actively bad for our health and in my case, is likely a major contributor to chronic pain conditions. The hardest homework I have from biofeedback is learning that I need to structure my day around rest and that my productivity increases when I do. I hope this is useful to someone besides me - because honestly - establishing this new routine is at that all-consuming stage. I think I'll go listen to one right now.

Changing of Seasons

Change is on my mind. I wish I could say it's just for this week, but that would be a lie. It's an ongoing theme this month. And sure. I get change is a constant. this isn't the gentle turning of the leaves from summer green to fall flame. I'm talking about the sharp lurches change sometimes takes - the tectonic jolt when the continent of the past slips reluctantly beneath the continent of the future.

This week, the day job asked me to go from being a full time, salaried employee with benefits to an on-call hourly with no bennies. Meaning I'll only work (and get paid) when the company has the work for someone with my skill set. I'd like to think it's a good thing for writing, even if it means a little belt tightening. However, it leads me to the next change.

The elderly parents are struggling more and more. Dad's really terrible anemia has been aided with a transfusion. A consult with a specialist has assured us it isn't a blood cancer. YAY! It does mean that he's bleeding internally somewhere and now begins the rapid fire, extensive search for that bleed. Glad the doctors are handling it, but it does mean I'm picking up all the work my mother has been helping with around the house so she can run my father all over Florida while this gets worked out.

Then the kicker. I watched a video that called into question what I write and how I write it. It has me thinking. Hard. About what I write. Why I write it. Where I put my energy and how much of that I'm willing and able to change. It has me thinking about how I want my future to look. And it has me thinking about how much change I am personally going to embrace to shape my future into a form that pleases me both now and in that future. No spoilers, but my favorite line from the video is this: You past need not be a predictor of your future.

 Change should always walk hand in hand with hope. Even if sometimes the adage is true that Autumn is about to show us how beautiful it can be to let go.

Yay Autumn!

 On my mind this week: 

🍂YAY AUTUMN!!🍂

This is my favorite season. The cooler temperatures. The changing colors. Finally being able to turn on my porch lights without being bug-bombed. My husky can laze outside without dying of heat, whilst I can spend more than five minutes under the sun without blistering. (Remember, I am a delicate flower.) I've moved the young potted lilacs and lavenders into the ground in hopes that they'll still be alive come spring. I've given the 50-year-old hedges their last high-n-tight for the year and am a fixin' to give the older lavenders a hippy haircut. 

Oh! No, no, no. I'm not a gardener. I don't even play one on TV. This girl has two black thumbs and flower beds overrun with weeds that have root systems older than I am. Normally, if I get near green things I 'splode in rashes and allergies, so I have to wait for autumn to roll in so I can bedeck myself like some action hero going incognito. Yep, that's totally the reason I wait until the first freeze to try to salvage my "garden." I'm definitely not a complete sloth. Nah. No. Nuh-uh.

The other reason I love this season is that it's CIDER time! Oh ho ho, you thought I was going to say Pumpkin Spice lattes, right? Long before Starbucks co-opted the cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and allspice blend for their signature lattes, some of us used to call that mix mulling spices (give or take some cardamom, ginger, and peppercorns). Know what mulling spices go great in? Wine! Cider! Don't get me wrong, pumpkins are great...as yard decor that feeds the wild animals. The deer are really appreciative so are the opossums.

Also great about autumn:

It's VACCINATION time.
GET YOUR DAMN FLU SHOTS & COVID BIVALENT BOOSTERS!
(I adore you, my dear readers.
I don't want you spending your holidays hospitalized.)

🍂 Happy Fall Y'all! 🍂

Listen! You Smell Something? A Sensory Exercise

 

Photo by Emily Bauman on Unsplash

While “Listen! You smell something?” is a brilliant comedic line in the 1984 film Ghostbusters, it also hits a home run in the way lines like that engage our brain. Confusion is king. I’ll talk about that at the end. 

Engaging all five senses is a powerful tool in writing, but today I’ll talk about the benefits of using them to calm anxiety.

Writers? Anxious? Nah . . .

Let’s start with 5-5-5 breath. Pick a spot ahead of you, ideally just above your comfortable line of sight but no neck craning, just slightly above straight ahead. Focus on that spot. Breathe in for five, hold for five, exhale for five. Repeat until your body is calm and relaxed. Then return to normal relaxed breathing for this next section. 

Keep looking ahead and use your senses to pick out:

● 5 things you see (either in your mind or peripheral vision)

● 4 things you feel (your feet on the ground, pillow underneath your head)

● 3 things you hear (electronics, or maybe just ringing in your ears)

● 2 things you smell (hmm, what did the cat just do?)

● 1 thing you taste (thinking of a taste may be simpler)

It may be more comfortable to close your eyes after you’ve picked out things you see. That’s perfectly fine. It can help you tune in more to the other senses.

Warning, you may doze off before you finish. Still, if you don’t, those heart palpitations caused by your nerves will have stopped by the time you get to the end.

 

If not, try 7-11 breathing to start. In for seven, out for eleven. It’s another terrific breathing technique that calms the body. 

Once you’ve found yourself in that super relaxed state, allow yourself to stay there a while. Make note of what else you’re sensing. Tune into your body and your surroundings. 

When you are ready to come out, simply wiggle your fingers or toes to bring your body back to a more conscious state. Get up, stretch if it feels good and move on with your day. 

Try that any time you feel anxious or simply want to tune into yourself and relax. What you come away with may surprise you.

You can also use a modified version of the above to do self-hypnosis. 

First, set an intention. What are you asking of your subconscious mind? Are you re-programming your mind to overcome a bad habit? A feeling? Pain? Our minds are powerful, you’d be amazed what you can accomplish. 

Set that intention and then a time frame. Tell yourself to come out of it in, say 15 minutes, or whatever works for you. 

Instead of 5-4-3-2-1 with the sense we’ll focus on three of them.

● 3 things you can see

● 3 things you can hear

● 3 things you can feel

Next repeat with 2 of each and then one of each. If more is needed, then repeat, this time from the bottom up--all the while focusing on that spot in front of you. Your eyes should feel tired. Do it until your eyelids just can’t stay open any longer. Then relax and enjoy the trance while your unconscious mind makes all the necessary changes.

Can you make lasting change in one session? Yes. 

Does it often take multiple sessions? Also yes.

Each one of us is different, so there is no “perfect” way. 

Whether self hypnosis or a simple few moments to calm an anxious mind, both techniques will help shift your mindset and leave you in a better frame of mind.

So what about the confusion I mentioned earlier? 

Confusion stops someone in their tracks. The downward spiral is interrupted. My hypnosis instructor told a story of confusing a client by pretending to smell his own watch every time she started her downward self-loathing spiral. She’d stop, ask him what he was doing. It would start a conversation that redirected her thinking. 

So, say you feel okay but you’re dealing with someone who is on edge, obsessing about something and heading into a spiral. Try “Listen! You smell that?” and see what happens. 

If they don’t laugh, they’ll still stop the downward spiral with a “What?” which may be enough to get them to stop.

You’re welcome.

Vee R. Paxton, your friendly neighborhood paranormal romance author and certified hypnotist.

Vee R. Paxton is a transplanted Midwesterner living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Portland and New York City are her two favorite places she's lived (although she loves her hometown in Missouri too!) 
She's passionate about storytelling and reading amazing stories. She's guardian to a sweet Bengal kitty cat, she worked in NYC theater, taught martial arts and also is trained in Reiki and hypnosis.

A Process to Everything

 

There is so much, and at the same time, so little on my mind. 

Today I sat in my garden and watched the sunshine peek through my hollyhocks. I planted these stalks from seed. Watered them. Weeded around them. Dreamt of how lovely the blossoms would be. And, at long last, admire them. 

But one thing I didn’t plan for was the variety of life buzzing around the flowers. There are more types of bees in this flower bed than I knew existed! There are hoverflies and butterflies, beetles and moths, fliers and crawlers I can’t name. It’s amazing!

And all of that is like writing a book.

It starts off by cultivating an idea. Then you weed out the bad details so the good stuff has room to spread. You dream about the plot and characters. And then you type The End. But the real magic happens after that when your book is out in the world, surrounded by life, interacting with life. And it’s amazing.

Happy daydreaming, friends!

What’s on your mind this week?

On My Mind: Treating the Writer Gently

 Yesterday, Jeffe shared a blog post from the SFWA blog with me.  Treading on Embers talks about the challenges of existing - much less writing and performing as a public-facing author - while managing chronic disability. In this case, it's invisible disability: chronic migraine disorder. It speaks to any chronic pain disability, though, and brings me to What's On My Mind this week.

How do you treat your writer gently?

Most of us in the writing trenches understand that 80 to 90 percent of the time, discipline is the answer to just about all of our writing woes. But there are days or weeks or months or (gods forbid) years where discipline is crumpled up like a used tissue and cast aside by Life Events (TM). It could be chronic illness that a writer has to contend with and which no amount of discipline will overcome. It could be a crushing and terrible diagnosis and subsequent treatment. It could be the deep pain of sitting in the hospital room with your slowly dying child. Or it could be a tornado of activity, instability, uncertainty, and circumstance changes crushing you into burnout.

Of course taking a break and allowing yourself to rest and heal is the first, obvious answer. But that's physical and mental recovery. There's also a subtler recovery required - more than emotional. I'm thinking about creative recovery.

Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way lays out a 12 week path to creative recovery. The program is laid out as a 12-step program because it was the way Julia Cameron charted her course for creative recovery after managing alcoholism. It is useful and it can be powerful. The current issue with the program for me is that it demands going out in public once a week. For me, that's a dicey commitment both with a pandemic that hasn't resolved in our favor and a chronic pain issue. It isn't that I don't *want* to go on Artist's Dates - it's that working a day job means there are no spoons left at 5pm to do anything but take a pain pill and collapse. That doesn't negate the rest of the program, granted. 

I'm just interested in how other people recognize their need for creative recovery and then what they do (or don't) in order to treat that writerly part of themselves with compassion and care - tempering discipline with a bit of nurturing. 

If you've considered how to treat your writer gently, what are you favorite ways of doing that? How do you approach creative recovery if it's ever been necessary for you?

Persistence On My Mind

On my mind today: this gal on the right who turned 19 on Thursday. She is the picture of persistence. She ached to be the queen of the household for so many years of her life. I honestly didn't know if she'd ever get to rule the roost. Erie held the position for most of Cuillean's life. When Erie died, Hatshepsut inherited the crown. Then Hatshepsut ceded her rulership to Cuillean just before dying unexpectedly. Cuillean is the undisputed queen of her domain at long last. Even if she's deaf as a post and drags one fore leg when she walks. Hobbles. Whatever. She keeps on. 

I'm doing my best to learn from her example. 

The other thing occupying my mind is a meme someone posted to a Facebook group. It hits kinda hard and I haven't gotten it out of my head for a few days, so I'm going to install it in yours and you can ponder (or wonder why humans are so intrinsically broken - whatever works) with me.

 

On My Mind: A Fork in the Publishing Road

It's 2022, year of the tiger, it's—well. It's that time I've earmarked for stepping back into the publishing game. Which means...it's time to make a spreadsheet! 

When I started writing, my goal was traditional publishing due to time constraints from the day job. Then my chronic disease showed up and I traded in the lab career for my health and continued to pursue traditional publishing due to health constraints. But now that things are settling down, and I’m easing myself back into a writing routine, things are different. 

I read a lot last year and for once I paid attention to who published the books AND how had I found out about the book. 

68% of my reading list was published by the Big 5 (Penguin/Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan). Mostly via their imprints which produce certain genres, like Orbit who is a Sci-fi Fantasy imprint that’s owned by Hachette. I read 9 books from Orbit. 32% of last years’ reads were from small presses or self-published. 

Spreadsheets are fun! But what I found even more interesting was how I found these books. 

• Middle Grade Book (I read to my kids at night—audiobook style): 6
• Found Following the Author: 11
• Part of a Series: 22
• Goodreads: 26
• Library (either on the shelf or from their newsletter): 32
• Instagram: 35

Along with reading a lot I paid attention to various authors marketing strategies and what readers responded with the most enthusiasm. Because everything boils down to what Charissa posted about: know thy readers. If you can find the readers, your book will be seen. 

Armed with spreadsheet info I now come to a fork in the road…one of life’s decisions. Which way do I go? Traditional publishing or Non-trad? It’s like playing the board-game Life and having to decide to go to college or get a job! To add to the conundrum, I write science fiction and fantasy. Do I go the same route with both works?

Things look different now, both in my capabilities and the publishing landscape. A debut author at one of the Big 5 isn’t as likely to get the marketing dollars, so I need to determine what they do bring to the table and is it worth the gamble that my work would earn enough to be considered a successful ROI in their books. A debut with a smaller press would bring different expectations, both with what they provide and what they consider a success. And again, it all comes down to where are the readers.

It’s time to weigh the pros and cons of trad publishing against non-trad. I need to determine what I want to control, how much I can handle, and what I want someone else to tackle. And it might end up being different paths for sci-fi and fantasy.

Are any of you writers debating which path to take with your work? Are any of you writers out there happy with the road you did travel?

On My Mind: Incorporating Accessibility Challenges into World Building

On my mind this week: the real-world challenges for people with declining physical ability and how to incorporate that into fictional-world and character building to enhance stories while planting seeds in readers' minds that may carry outside the story to make small gains in the real world. Representation matters, right?

There's nothing quite as heart-wrenching as living with someone whose body is steadily declining--far faster than normal aging--and witnessing society slamming doors in the person's face. As a relatively able-bodied person, there are so many things about accessibility and product design that never cross my mind. Now that my loved one's muscular degeneration disease has passed a certain threshold, their limitations can no longer be masked/hidden. Many small-to-medium modifications/adaptions would allow my loved one to continue to engage with society if adopted. Some would be (sadly) costly, while others are merely a matter of consideration. There are improvements beyond ADA building codes and standards (and yes, my voice joins the chorus already demanding that ADA minimums be required for all new builds including residential, nationwide) just waiting to happen. Here are three minor examples:

1. Restaurants, Lounges, & Waiting Rooms: Have some chairs with arms. Provide a few pub-height tables with corresponding seats 24-28inches from the floor and arms on the seats. Folks whose knees, hips, or leg muscles have gone to crap need chairs from which they can lever themselves into an upright position. That starts with seats that place their ass above their knees. 
2. Drinkware & Wherever Drinks are Served: Lightweight cups with large handles. Some folks need the added stability of a handle on their drinkware, aka a mug. Standard mugs have handles for average-sized hands that are often too small for average-sized people, much less larger-than-average folks, while oversized mugs tend to be unbalanced and heavy. "Light and large" applies to disposable cups too.
3. Slippery Surfaces: If a product is meant to be held or grabbed, stop making its surfaces slippery. From body washes to takeout containers to doorknobs, "sleek" is an exclusionary design choice. A firm grip is relative, and even the firmest hold can result in dropsies.

There are many more examples and many an article/tweet/post about accessibility challenges. A character stubbing a toe on an interior threshold built too high reads like a comedy setup, but if that character has a drop left foot and the extra beat is taken to show the emotional toll of a seemingly minor inconvenience, then...then a seed is planted. That seed might just grow into a vine of consideration that bridges fantasy and reality. 

Scraping Under Those Deadlines

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is whatever is on our minds. Which is always dangerous to ask. We're all busy people, so I'm going to bet we all have about 10,000 things on our minds, all bumping and jostling for priority.

Top of MY mind right now is preparing for the release of THE DRAGON'S DAUGHTER AND THE WINTER MAGE. This book ended up having a very tight turnaround. So tight that, as of this writing, I'm not guaranteed to make it. The clock is still ticking for my upload deadline of tomorrow evening. BUT, I'm feeling optimistic that I'll make it! I finished writing the book on Wednesday afternoon, did a final polishing pass on it Thursday morning (Including notes from beta readers who read the final chapters as I finished them), then sent it to my copy editor/proofreader. She's promised it to me by this evening - and it's looking good, as I just paid the invoice - at which time I'll make the final corrections and send it off to my formatter. (Yes, I pay a formatter rather than doing it myself. There's a lot of good reasons for that, but I won't go into them here.) My formatter is amazing (part of why I pay him to do it) and has promised me I'll have the formatted versions tomorrow. So... I should make it. Light a candle for me and show your faith by preordering :D 

      

Meanwhile, I've put the rest of the Heirs of Magic series on sale for the rest of September, so now is a fine time to pick up the first two books and the prequel novella.

Otherwise, I'm just hanging out here, waiting for those edits to come in... 

Which way do I go?

Earlier this week, a fellow author who'd written a trilogy asked me the prize question: Should I find a small press or should I self publish?

This author has ten books to her name already, but she'd recently broken up with her agent and former publishing house. No earth-shattering reason. It was just a poor genre fit for all parties. So here she is, out on her own. 

You'll be proud of me. For once, I did not say "it depends". Instead, I asked her what she wanted. We went through the pros of each:

Self-Publishing Pros

• You maintain control of every aspect of your books.
• You decide what the covers look like.
• You decide how much covers and formatting cost.
• You decide how quickly or slowly to release your novels.
  

Self-Publishing Cons

• You assume all of the monetary risk.
• You're entirely on your own for marketing.
• You're responsible for every aspect of your books and some days, that's a heavy burden. 
• Print versions of your book may require extra formatting, extra cover costs, and may be priced out of most readers' reach.
  

Small Press Pros

• A sense of legitimacy.
• A contract.
• Editors you don't have to pay for.
  
• You can usually leverage your publishing house mates for mutual marketing boosts.
• Most publishing houses have a marketing coordinator on staff and/or a marketing mailing list where authors can lean on amassed experience.

Small Press Cons

• You may not  have a print run if the press is e-book only.
• Someone else controls the book cover process.
• Your rights are tied up for a few years.
• Some presses tie up more than just print and digital rights.
• Some presses have long publication lead times and cannot guarantee your preferred release schedule.
• Small presses occasionally go out of business and that makes a mess.

As we talked it became clear she wanted one thing - help with marketing. I wish I could tell you what decision she made, but I don't yet know. I suspect she'll opt for a small press, but that's a guess. Which way would you go?

The Beauty of Starting at Zero

On my mind this week, the beauty of starting at zero.

The final book in my UF series is in the hands of my CP and soon to be handed off to my editors. After seven books of evolving the same world and the same characters, it's time to conceive anew. It's exciting and invigorating. The only thing locked in at this point is that it'll be a trilogy in a sub-genre of fantasy. I've spent the week gorging on books, comics, and anime to replenish my creative well. Now, I'm staring at a blank notebook page plotting, scheming, and leaving no boundaries on my imagination. 

New characters. New worlds. New magics. New rules. New challenges. 

Time to play god and create something beautiful from nothing. 

How delightful.

When the World Goes Sideways

Ah, the many little substances, rituals, and activities we use to soothe ourselves. Corvid is partaking a little homegrown catnip. 

Dad is being admitted to the hospital as I type. Thus, you may understand when I say there's next to nothing but static on my mind. So far, it looks like he'll be okay. Yet another close call. Had Urgent Care not insisted on giving him an antibiotic shot, things would have gone very, very badly today. 

So I'm self medicating with documentaries and fake ice cream (frozen banana, blueberries, plant milk blitzed in a blender). Meditation is probably on tap for the evening, too.

What's your vice of choice when your world goes pear-shaped?

 

When things Don’t Work out the way You wanted them to

Life is like a broken butter dish, you never know—wait, wrong line. But I did crush my butter dish and I don’t know what I’m gonna get to replace it. 

Cracked, broken, disappointments. There’s a million sayings about failing: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Failure is part of success. Think positively and positive things will happen. Hang in there, baby. 

And since we’re all human here—apologies if you’re reading this, ART—we’ve experienced things not going to plan in countless ways. Butter dish, am I right? Though that’s not the only disappointment on my mind this week, I’m also obsessing over how I keep failing to get any writing done. 

So, authors, how do we deal with disappointments in regards to writing?

The past couple of weeks have been challenging for me health wise. It’s difficult to look at screens or even move quickly when your head isn’t on straight, literally. I’m becoming a regular at the chiropractor’s office and I’m running out of audiobooks (that’s my SOS for any audiobook recommendations you may have). And I’m still struggling to get any words down! 

Then I saw a fellow author’s post on Instagram about setting goals for the week, big or small…that you intend to celebrate! These wise words are from @ChandraBlumberg if you’re wondering, she’s positive, uplifting, and has a bright smile. Go follow her. 

Her words were a simple reminder that struck me. I prefer to start my days off with a little yoga and prayer and meditation time before I even come down the stairs. No, it doesn’t always happen because I have a dog that snores and kids that sleepwalk, but I feel better and happier when I start my day off that way. Now, why can’t I translate that to my writing? Why do I only see the pieces that don’t go according to plan and not the celebratory parts?

In 2018 one of my manuscripts was a finalist in the Golden Heart and this national award put me with a group of likeminded writers. We chose our class name: Persisters because we were a bunch of women who would persist in their dreams to write. I’m thankful for each one of these women and wish I had more time to talk with them, but even the bits of check-ins here and there are a boost. They remind me that we all have struggles, writing related and not. They remind me that I want to keep going because they’re proof that hard work does pay off. And they remind me that they’re here for me to unload, writing related or not. 

For me, that’s something that I need to be able to keep writing. Things don't always go according to plan‚ and that’s okay! Yes, this is what happens when the topic is what's on my mind...you get to ramble along with me. 

It's okay because I need my Persisters and fellow authors on Instagram to remind me that I’m not alone in this. I’m going to make a conscious effort to celebrate a little thing, writing related, each morning. I’ll take stock of my to-do list and set an attainable goal that won’t stress me out. And I’m going to keep cheering on everyone else because you never know when a kind word or a bit of encouragement will make all the difference. 

Have you found your writing community and surrounded yourself with those who want to lift you up?