Adventures and Episodes: Summer 2023 Edition

“In sweet summertime…”

Ahhh, summer. For many, this is a time of refreshment, of relaxation, of vacation, of taking time away.

For others it’s a time of busy-ness, of frantically-paced rushing about to get all the fun things accomplished.

For some of my family members, it’s the most stressful time of year at their jobs.

For me, it’s kind of a combination. I want to spend summer at the lake, just swimming, relaxing, and soaking it all in. But as my kids get older, I am finding it harder and harder not to fill up the summer months with activities. Good activities. Fun activities… but time-consuming activities all the same.

All in all, it’s been a great summer so far, so let’s dive in and see what’s been going on, shall we?

Reading

The Eden Option by Allen Arnold - I’m taking my time with this one and just savoring it at the moment. Mr. Arnold is one of the few auto-buy authors I’ve got that doesn’t write strictly fantasy. He writes encouragement straight to creative souls, and I treasure his words.

He also has a kind of daily devotional bits of wisdom and encouragement that you can sign up to receive in your email each day. They are very short, but they are poignant and so very encouraging. GET DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT HERE

Little Men by Louisa May Alcott - After finishing my re-read of Little Women, I marched straight ahead and started re-reading Little Men. I remembered liking it better as a kid than Little Women, and I’d have to say that is still the case.

Specter of the Past by Timothy Zahn - it was so much fun re-reading the original Thrawn Trilogy with Derek that we decided to continue on and read the concluding duology together, as well.

The King’s Curse by JF Rogers - I’m about 30% of the way through this one and so far it is quite intriguing. It’s part epic, part portal fantasy, and has a shapeshifting dragon who sometimes looks like a cat and other times looks like a puppy and I am here for it!

Watching

All Creatures Great and Small (2020) - My parents and sister got me watching this when I was out in WA and I just absolutely adore it. I have watched and enjoyed some of the original show, but I definitely prefer this one. It is just so sweet and beautiful and ack! Highly recommend!

The Sound of Freedom - Derek and I went to watch this and it was incredible. For a movie that only cost $14 million to make, you see every single penny of it on the screen. (For comparison, most big-name movies cost anywhere from $100million - $300million these days, and some of those don’t look anywhere near as good as this one did!) Based on a true story, this movie certainly shows the evils of sex-trafficking, but manages to do it in a PG-13 way that doesn’t show you anything. The theme is tough, but it is exquisitely handled. The acting is excellent, the videography is gorgeous and has a lot of artistry to it, without being distracting, and the script is tight and well-written. Highly recommend.

Mission Impossible 7 part 1 - Despite there being very little in the way of good movies to choose from at the box office, we’ve seen more in theaters than I expected. Dead Reckoning is a fun, fast-paced, entertaining movie that is everything I’ve come to expect from the Mission Impossible franchise. While not a “perfect” film, it was a wild ride with nothing offensive in it (there is a scene where they go to a party and there are some shadowy dancing figures I could have done without, but they are very shadowy and I can’t say if they were truly scantily clad or just giving that impression). There was one info-dumping scene near the beginning, and some of the action sequences felt a little too drawn out… movie could have been 20 minutes shorter and lost nothing (and that’s coming from someone who truly doesn’t mind sitting through a 3-hour movie!) But in the end, Ethan Hunt is still the hero we’ve always loved, the acting is good, the story is fun and twisty, and we get to watch Tom Cruise run really fast (because these movies tend to always come down to a question of how fast Tom Cruise can run), and the stunts are pretty epic. Definitely recommend.

Auth-ing

I released The Orb and the Airship and so far it’s done really well, getting that fancy orange #1 New Release banner in not one but two separate categories!

We had the cover reveal for Steal the Morrow and I’m very excited about releasing that this coming September, as well as the other 8 books in this multi-author series of classics retold in fantastical ways!

Speaking of which, today is also the cover reveal day for book 5 in the series, Raise the Dead by Nina Clare, a Jane Eyre retelling!

Would you go into hell to rescue the one you love?

After long years of hardship Jane Rochester is now a young bride settling into a quiet life with the man she loves. But a mysterious stranger at the door resurrects old troubles, unearths buried secrets, and revives a family curse; the past will not leave them in peace.

A malignant force is tearing Jane’s new family apart, and she will have to journey into the very mouth of hell to seek to break it, with no assurance of ever returning home to the living world.

Nina Clare re-imagines Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in a fantasy quest through the supernatural realms of heaven and hell.

It’s so fun seeing all the covers revealed each week… Miblart has been doing such a lovely job with each of them. They are all so unique and yet definitely look like they go together in a series, don’t you think?

Don’t they look so pretty all together like that? 5 Covers revealed! 4 Left to go!

I had intended to try to get a good amount of drafting done on Echo 2, but it in all the other excitement of releases and reveals, it just didn’t happen.

Trying to release 2 books only 3 months apart is… wow. It’s a lot.

However, I did get the proof-edits back on Mantles of Oak and Iron, and I got through all of those and sent it off to my formatter, so that’s a huge thing off my plate, and it looks like we are still on schedule to hit my January 12th release date for that!

Life-ing

Remember how I said it’s been a busy summer? Well, in addition to all the author-y things, we’ve also been traveling quite a bit.

At the end of May / beginning of June, I flew out to WA to visit my side of the family and meet my new baby niece! (She is adorable). My brother introduced me to paddle boarding and I fell in love. I need a paddle board now.

Then my dad, brother, sister, and I drove over to Oregon and I got to be part of helping with the film shoot for my sister’s next music video. They let me carry the tripod, and I helped make sure Brittany had a blanket to wrap around her between shots one evening (it might have been June, but the beach at sunset was COLD). It was so so so much fun getting to be involved in that whole enterprise. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

Summer running started up for my girls, getting them into shape for the coming cross country season this fall. The boys were on coach-pitch and t-ball teams and seemed to have a blast with that. 4-6 year old t-ball is still one of the most hilarious things in the world to watch.

Last week, we drove out to Door County for our second annual family-get-together to go hear Brittany Jean in concert at the Fish Stock Concert Series. She did such a great job! Then we spent the next few days just hanging out, hiking at Peninsula State Park (one of my favorite places on earth), playing putt-putt golf, pickle ball, going swimming, etc.

Hiking along Eagle Trail at Peninsula State Park!

Now, we have Derek’s side of the family here to visit, which is super fun!

In a couple of weeks, the younger hobbits have swim lessons, and then cross country season will start up, as well as the 2023/2024 school year and…. whew. Where is the summer buzzing off to in such a hurry?!?

Future Plans

I am excited to announce that the Silmaril Awards will be returning this September for our 8th consecutive year!

We have some brand-new hosts stepping into the fray, as well as many returning hosts, and I am excited to be helping out once more with my favorite blogging event of the year!

Of course, Steal the Morrow is releasing September 29th, so I am excited about that. If you’d like to join my launch team, you can sign-up to help out below.

Beyond that… I’m not sure! I’m just scribbling away in the pages here, trying to stay on top of everything I’ve got coming out in the future days and months… scrambling to release these books in the order and in the timeframe I promised, and knowing that I’ll have to slow down a bit eventually! I absolutely cannot keep up a “publish every three months” pace… but I’m hoping to get some other projects underway soon so that once the Turrim Archive has all completed releasing I’ll be able to settle into a stable and much more doable “one book a year” sort of pace for you, my readers.

Whew! Well… that was definitely a news-full update! I hope you enjoyed listening to me ramble on and on about all the things!

What are you reading / watching / writing / doing this summer? I’d love to hear all about your adventures, so let me know in the comments what you’re up to!