Wrapping Up Winter Ishness
I’m feeling highly nostalgic lately…
But I think “ishness” just is such a lovely word that does such a great job of conveying all the implied updates, adventures, and episodes of life. Tips hat to Deborah for starting the trend.
Anyway… 2024.
It’s been… a whirlwind, a blur, a kick in the teeth? I’m not even sure how to describe or define how the first three months of this year have gone. But there’s definitely been a lot happening.
Before we get too far into the update however, I have three announcements!
Lord of the Rings Giveaway
The first announcement is that I’m partnering with a bunch of other fantasy authors to give away about $200 worth of Lord of the Rings-themed prizes to one lucky winner!
Are you a fan of Lord of the Rings? Then this giveaway is for you!
Prizes include:
Lord of the Rings Special Edition Box Set, Frodo and Sam Funko Pops, Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost camping mug, Po-tay-toes candle, The Lord of The Rings Adventure Book Game, Fellowship of the Ring sticker pack, Second Breakfast enamel pin, and Elven leaf bookmark!
Caffeinated Fantasy Awards Voting is Still Open
The Orb and the Airship made it to the finals list in the Caffeinated Fantasy Awards, and there is still time to vote!
Of course, there are some other fabulous books in the running as well, so I totally understand if you end up casting your vote for Break the Beast by Allison Tebo or Wormwood Abbey by Christina Baehr or Dark and Stormy by Susannah Rowntree instead… I miiiight have voted for one of them myself.
Call for Cover Reveal help and ARC readers!
Time really starts to really fly by when you’re releasing a book every six months, ya know? This is the official call for help with the Cover Reveal and Advance Review Copies for Hearts of Stone and Steel.
The cover reveal will be on April 15. Yes, tax day. It’s not my fault they put it in the middle of the month, it’s the date I need.
And the book release will be on June 25th (barring unforeseen catastrophes).
If you’d like to help out with either of those, just fill out the form below. It’s super short and sweet!
Okay, now that we’ve got all the various odds and ends out of the way… let’s move on to the winter wrap up!
Writing
In spite of everything, it’s actually been a pretty good year for writing so far.
January: I added 10,000 words to the rough draft of Jana of Sea and Summer, my sequel to An Echo of the Fae
February: I added 4,000 words to the rough draft of Jana, and wrote 10,000 words in a short super-hero story that I titled Play Date, which was possibly the most fun I’ve had writing in a very long time.
March: So far, I’ve written a piece of 1000-word flash fiction for my space truckers Blake and Earl just for fun, and it was a blast to hang out with them again. I’ve also gone completely through the entire proof-edit of Hearts of Stone and Steel and am now reading the book out loud to myself as a final pass before editing. I’m also working on Jana on the side, but I’ve been writing this book mostly by hand and I won’t know how many words I’ve written this month until I take the time to copy them onto my computer. But I’m guessing based on standard page-to-word-count translation that it’s somewhere in the region of 2,000 words at the moment.
Reading
It’s been a good reading year so far. Most of my reads have been things I’ve agreed to read for reviews or even a beta here and there, which I don’t do much of unless I already know I enjoy the author’s writing style… I just really don’t like getting in situations where I feel like I have to leave a review for something that wasn’t my cup of tea.
Wet Behind the Ears by WR Gingell - Book 3 in the spin-off series that picks up after the 10-book City Between series. I am loving getting to spend time with Athelas again. Watching him try to earn redemption (without really wanting to change, or thinking he's incapable of change) is really painful at times. Excited to dive into book 4!
Favorite quotes:
“It was stupid to try and make anyone think that Athelas wouldn’t stab everyone in the house in the back if it suited his ends, but it looked as though Camellia wanted to try.”
“I’m not sure that killing should be the default answer to all of our problems.”
The Witch’s Curse / The Queen’s Curse by J.F. Rogers - Books 2 and 3 in the Cursed Lands trilogy I started reading last summer. I enjoyed book 1, but I LOVED books 2 and 3. This is one of those trilogies that just keeps getting better the further in you get.
Read my full reviews here:
Wishing on a Supervillain by H.L. Burke - I knew I was going to like this one. I just didn't know how much. Switch is such a fun supervillain, and despite the often poorly timed humor that he exhibits, there's a level of serious and introspective to him that makes his arc incredibly believable. And Nixie is just the sweetest thing ever. I love how Burke created a character who was extremely innocent (naive, the world might call her) and managed to portray that as a strength. The world needs more heroes like Nixie: strong because of their wide-eyed innocence. Oliver is just the dearest bean. I love him to bits and want to hug him. Another "super" fun romp through this world that I have grown to love visiting.
Favorite Quotes:
“You’re heroes. Do hero stuff! What good are you if you don’t?”
“This world is awful to beautiful things.”
Watching
We went to see The Chosen season 4 episodes 1-8 in theaters as a family, three very fun family evenings out. Highly recommend this show if you haven’t seen it yet! I love this show so much. I love how it makes me want to scour the New Testament playing “in the Bible, or not?” with various scenes and characters from the show. (And I enjoy finding out that many of the things I think they’re just making up actually have basis in the Scriptures… like, for those who’ve been watching, did you know that Joanna, the wife of Cuza - Herod’s financial advisor is actually mentioned by name in Luke 8:1-3… and the women’s efforts to help his ministry financially can be found in those short verses as well!) I mean, yes, they’re extrapolating a lot what that financial help might have looked like - imagination is needed to fill in the gaps… but I never would have thought twice about those verses without the show. I also love how it reminds me of how much actual time passes in each of the Gospels. Like, I mean, I can read through Matthew in an hour, but the time that it took to live was three whole years! There was a lot of walking in between all the things that Matthew recorded.
Dune 2: It was fun and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I have so many opinions about Dune in general, but I enjoyed the first book and I enjoyed these movie adaptations, and I really hope they don’t make any more because the books got weird fast after the first one. (that’s one of my opinions).
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: on the recommendation of a few of my dear readers, Derek and I watched the Disney+ Percy Jackson show and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved it. This is one of those adaptations where it felt like the person who wrote the script actually did more than look at the cover of the book! So fun! Another one to add to my growing list of highly recommended middle grade fantasy tv shows! A tiny little detail that I just loved to bits was how they used the chapter titles as the episode names!
Kung Fu Panda: Realized that the boys probably haven’t seen this one (or don’t remember it if they did) we watched this for family night last week, and it was just as fun as I remembered.
Jurassic World: Watched this one with the kids and nobody had nightmares, so that’s a win. The kids all love dinosaurs, and Sparky chose this for her birthday movie to watch.
Total side note, but apparently we can’t get through an Ishness without Jenelle talking about Star Wars, but I rewatched Ahsoka with the kids, and we all were picking on it a bit for a scene where a bunch of Hera’s X-Wing pilots get shot down (in episode 4 I think) and there is zero reaction from Hera about it. I mean, we’re talking about pilots who thought highly enough of her to follow her off the reservation on an unsanctioned military operation, and we’re talking about Hera, one of the most caring characters in all of Star Wars canon. So why doesn’t she at least call out their names or make a pained face, or something? But no, these are unnamed pilots because the writers thought, “X-wings blowing up will show that the stakes are high and the bad guys are super villainous and capable.” And they didn’t think any further than that.
So, back to Jurassic World, we’re watching, and a team of park employees/security go after the Indominous Rex to tranquilize it and put it back in its pen, right? And they (for the most part) get eaten. And over the intercoms, you hear them shouting each other’s names, and the main characters back at the base are screaming their names telling them to get out of there.
Same reason for the scene. Two totally different executions. Two totally different audience reactions.
So… writer tip… if you want to kill off a character to show that your villain is exceedingly villainous, but you don’t want to kill off one of your mains…. at least give the unimportant character a name.
Ahem. Sorry…. tangent.
Life-ing
A lot of living has been happening around here. Life has been exceedingly hectic and more than a little stressful, to be honest.
And winter in general has been very disappointing in the weather department. We really got practically no snow at all.
However, I did take the kids skiing with our homeschool group and that was an absolute blast of a day. The girls had been before, but the boys hadn’t, and the girls’ last ski trip was when they were like 5 and 8 so they don’t remember it much. We managed to make it through the whole day without me losing my mind or anyone getting injured, and all four kids had fun and want to go again. #winning I’m excited that it looks like I’ll finally have some ski-buddies to take to the slopes!
School has been pretty intense this year. But there are only 8 weeks of it left! And they all said, “Hooray!”
The boys participated in our church’s annual pinewood derby that we have with our BLAST (mid-week children’s) program. They did well!
Brant took home 2nd place for speed (surprising everybody, us most of all… we’ve never managed to build a fast car before!) He chose to theme his car after “How Ridiculous” one of our family’s favorite youtube shows. grin
And Grayden took home 1st place for design with his elephant car. That’s 3 years in a row!
The kids are all taking homeschool choir this semester, and Nat and Brant are in chimes. It’s 4-hours on Thursdays well-spent. Track started up last week and both Leiana and Nat are enjoying it immensely so far, so that’s good.
There’s some pretty intense health stuff going on with my family that I don’t want to go into super publicly here, but if you could keep my family in your prayers, it would be greatly appreciated.
Spring Plans
I’m not even sure when Spring officially begins. Was it yesterday? Is it today? Is it tomorrow? I get the whole vernal equinox/autumnal equinox thing, but really… the 21st is good enough for Summer and Winter, why can’t it be good enough for Spring and Fall as well? Like, does the start of the season really have to jump around by a day or two every year?
Anyway, spring plans.
I’m going to be taking off by myself to visit a whole bunch of my side of the family shortly. Would really appreciate prayers for safe travels, and for my husband and kids to do really well with me gone for a week.
The big project right now of course is the final edits and formatting of Hearts of Stone and Steel. Also, I’m getting a little nervous about how much work I might have to do editing book 5… which I know is a whole 15 months away at this point… but like I said, time is flying. I changed a lot about book 4 since I drafted book 5 and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by it if I’m honest.
Finishing up the school year strong is another major goal.
And before summer officially hits, Derek is taking me to Ireland to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary! So that’s a big item from the “bucket list” that I’m super excited to cross off in a couple of months!
Happy Spring
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Happy Spring 〰️
Well… that was a novel of a post, huh?
If you read the whole thing… you are a super fan and you are my favorite.
What are your plans for Spring, dear Reader? How was your Winter? Did you read or watch anything that you just absolutely loved and want to shout about? Do you have any projects of your own that you’ve worked on or plan to start? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!