Writing Update – March 2022

Happy Wednesday Scribblers, I hope you are all doing well. As you may have noticed, I took last week off from my blog. I was dealing with some medical issues. Nothing to worry about, and everything all worked out. Which has been a big relief. I’m happy to say I’m not going anywhere anytime soon!

This week I wanted to provide a quick update for you. Regarding my writing, I’m still moving forward with Conspiracy-A New World (Book 3). However, there has been a delay with my publisher. I’m hopeful this will not slow down the long-delayed release of the book, but I can’t say for sure. In audiobook news. Contact-A New World (Book 1) is about finished and I’m thrilled with how well Steve Connor (find him here) has done with the story. Steve really has narrated the heck out of the novel and brought my words to life. I can’t wait for you all to hear it. Along those lines, once Steve finishes with Contact, he will move on to Conviction (find both books here for signed copies and here for all other editions). I’ll keep you posted on when the audiobooks are available.

Also, on the writing front, I’m about ready to send off Volaria. I have another round of edits I want to make and then I’ll be shopping the story around to see if I can get any bites. Wish me luck.

Lastly, and I couldn’t be more pleased to share; I have in-person event news. With the restrictions being lifted and more and more events coming back. I’m happy to share some of the following in-person events I have planned:

April 2022

Hayward Lit Hop—(April 30th, 4pm) Books on B, 1014 B St, Hayward, CA 94541

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May 2022

The Bay Area Book Festival 2022—(May 7th and 8th) Berkley, CA

BeastCrawl—(May 28th) Oakland, CA

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June 2022

Davis Pride—(June 12th) Davis Central Park, 401 C Street, Davis, CA 95616

I want to say nothing will change, but you never know. So, stay tuned.

That’s it for this week. Remember to check out my events page (find it here), now that more local events are coming online, I’ll be adding more and more events. So, you don’t want to miss out. Until next time, have a great week.

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Updates from Shelter-in-Place Land

Hello Scribblers. Wow! My last blog post was on March 25th that seems like a lifetime ago. My family and I are now on day 30 of our shelter-in-place order. I’m an essential worker (technically) as I work for a nonprofit that has been working the front lines of the pandemic; delivering food, preparing meals, providing mental wellness, helping the homeless, etc. Physically I’m not on the front lines, however, I’ve been working the back end and supporting our agency efforts, which is a lot of phone calls and emails with other nonprofits to track down necessary items so our work can continue. Unlike several of my coworkers, I’m working from home and only going into the office on rare occasions.

As for my husband, he works from home about 50% of the time, but because of his job he is also an essential worker (keeping his companies lights on, paying of staff, etc.) When he goes into the office he works alone, so he doesn’t come into contact with others.

When it comes to my 80-year-old father he stays at home 95% of the time, every day he takes his car for a short drive and about once a week he will go to the grocery store and pick up food. He wears a mask and does what he needs to do to not come in contact with others.

Now, before you yell at me about him going out. We tried to keep him home, but short of handcuffing him to his chair, there is no way to do it, so we mitigate the risk, for him, as best we can. He wears a mask and he goes to the store during the early morning senior hours. He washes his hands and uses non reusable bags (i.e. paper)

I’m happy to report we are all healthy, which at this point is the most important thing.

On to something lighter.

I have two announcements today. First, I’ve been working on two new writing projects. One is about a lost continent off the Pacific Coast, and the second is about a future where vampires, lycan, humans and witches all live together. Both ideas have been fun to work on. I’m not 100% sure where either story will land, but it’s been nice to jump back into writing.

Lastly, for today, my publisher is continuing its 40% off sale on all eBooks, including mine. If you need something to read, please click here and check out all the amazing books available. Read more about them below.

That is all for now, my lovely Scribblers. Do you have any ideas for keeping busy while we are all at home? Share them below. Please remember to drop me a heart/like letting me know you stopped by. If you want to help support me and my writing efforts please consider sharing this post with folks to help me get the word out, especially about the book sale, it’s a great deal for eBooks and you are supporting a local business and local artists. Until next time I hope you stay safe and have a great week.

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Five Money Saving Tips for the New Year and a Writing Update

Since it’s the New Year I thought we could all use some money saving tips. So here are ten of my favorites:

1. Cook instead of eating out.  Considering how expensive it is to eat out, try cooking at home more.  It’s cheaper and you are eating more healthful especially since you know what you are cooking and what you are putting into it.

2. If you have direct deposit with your job have them take a hundred dollars from your paycheck and have it sent to a Credit Union or your savings account.  If you don’t have direct deposit have your bank do an automatic withdrawal from your checking account and putting it in your savings account on the same day you are paid. And if you want to be really old school put twenty dollars a week in an envelope and keep it put away.  Regardless of how you do it the money is gone so you won’t miss it and you’ll be surprised at how quickly it adds up.

3. If you like movies go on cheap nights.  Most theaters note only offer matinee pricing but usually once a week, typically a Monday or Tuesday the tickets will be about half the cost of what they would be on a Friday or Saturday. 

4. Along with cooking at home, double your recipe so you have leftovers to take for lunch.  If you can save the $10 for lunch each day that is about $200 a month you are saving. Even if you don’t like, or have leftovers, make a sandwich and take a piece of your favorite fruit, it’s a lot cheaper than eating out everyday.

5. This is a big one.  Make your coffee at home before you go to work and take it in a travel mug.  You can still go out of your Starbucks once in a while but at $5 (on average) for one Starbuck’s coffee the cost adds up.  It’ll surprise you how much you can save even if you just cut out one or two Starbucks a week.

Bonus. Buy what you can in bulk; laundry detergent, toilet paper, paper towels, meat, cheese, cereal, milk, coffee, etc. These are things you’re going to use and when you buy them in small amounts can cost you a lot, but in bulk it will save you money.

These are all tips that Eric and I use (with the exception of the coffee we don’t drink coffee) and we’ve saved a lot of money.  It won’t make you rich, but it will sure help keep the money in the wallet. If you have any tips, share them below.

Writing Update:

What a busy start of the year I’ve had.  As you all know I had my book launch for The Calling this month and had an amazing write up in the San Jose Mercury News (click here for the article).  I also, had my first ever Blog Tour thank you to IndiGo Marketing.  If you want to check out each days stop, click on the day below:

Day One: The Blogger Girls
Day Two: Love Byters Reviews
Day Three: Queer Sci Fi
Day Four: Divine Magazine
Day Five: The Novel Approach

I also took some much-needed time off.  Eric and I went down to Disneyland for a week.  We hung out with some family and some amazing friends. It was a great break. Here are a couple fun pictures from our trip if you want to suffer through and check them out.

While I was on vacation, I got to finish The Stark Divide (Liminal Sky Book 1) by J. Scott Coatsworth.  Its a wonderful story and such a joy to read.  If you want to check out my review of the novel click here.  This is a must read if you love Science Fiction.  It has something for everyone. Buy it here.

For a quick writing update I wanted to share that, at this moment my publisher is evaluating A New World – Contact and I’m hoping to have more information on that soon.  I’m also working on book two of my New World Series and I’m over a three-quarters of the way through.

Which means, I’ll be working on the sequel to The Calling in the coming months. I have the second book outlined and I’m working on the finer points of the plot, but that doesn’t mean everything is set in stone.  So if there something special you would like to see in book two of The Calling now’s your chance to weigh in.  You can make your suggestions below in the comments section.  Please try to avoid spoilers. Let’s have a little fun with this.

Until next week have a great week.

Writing & Personal Update

It’s time for another Writing Update and given all that has happened over the last several weeks there is no better time than now.  Things for me have been a mixed bag full of blessing and sadness. It’s never easy talking about the not-so-happy events going on in our lives, well not for me, but I figured I would share as talking it through is supposed to help.

Recently, my husband and I had to go to Utah to take care of my husband’s father. He has terminal cancer and dementia.  It’s not been easy, and my husband is an only child, so there is a lot for him to deal with. All I can do is support him and the decisions he makes. Luckily we’ve had some wonderful support from his aunt and uncle so we weren’t totally alone in dealing with all of this. 

A few weeks back we all spent a week in Utah taking care of his father’s house (getting it ready to sell). We also spent time seeing his dad and making sure he is settled in the care facility, which is amazing. The staff are wonderful and so is his father’s hospice worker.  As I’m sure you can imagine it was a stressful week, but we got everything we needed accomplished. By the end of the week we were all exhausted but we still had out humor. Eric’s uncle summed up the week like this, “It’s amazing we’re all still talking to each other.” We all got a good chuckle out of that.

Amidst that, my short story, The Reunion was being finalized and getting ready for its launch. The launch was October 23rd and went off swimmingly.  I’m so thrilled that I had the support of great friends, family, and the wonderful folks at NineStar Press (check them out here).  They really helped and made the process seem less.

Unfortunately, because this has been a mixed bag of emotions. Last week I got news that one of my only living great-aunts passed away (she was 99 years old).  This sad news brought up the memories of my grandmother (my aunt’s older sister) and the realization that that generation has all moved on. We have a close family so that has made it all the more difficult.

Also, on October 23rd it was the fifth anniversary of Eric’s mother’s passing in a tragic accident.  So, the day my debut short story launched there was an air of both joy and sorrow. Eric and I agreed that his mother would’ve been proud and excited and we’re sure that the launch date was no coincidence.

I’m a firm believer that our family never leaves our side and that they are always there with us. The launch day was one way for her and my mom (also passed away) to show their collective support.

There you have it an emotional roller-coaster.

I don’t want to end this on a sad note because as I said at the start these last few weeks have been a mixed bag of both good and bad. To that point, I still have two more books coming out over the next few months, A Dragon for Christmas (December 18th) and The Calling (Jan 1st) I’ve also, been writing/editing three different stories so there is much more to come. And lastly, I want to share some quotes from a few of the reviews I’ve received for, The Reunion (buy it here):

“…cleverly written and I couldn’t put it down because I just needed to know what had happened in this town!” – Lulu Forth (Alpha Book Club) full review here.

“I thought I knew where the author was going with the story and time after time, they proved me wrong.  And that ending….” – Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words (full review here).

“A fantastic story full of good times and bad, The Reunion is one of those tales that you're going to want to read over and over again.” – Amazon Review by Wordsmith full review here.

Until next week, have a great week gang.  Remember I love hearing from you, so leave me a comment and don’t forget to like and share.
 

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Writing Update

I didn’t realize until today the last time I provided a writing update was in April.  So, let’s get you all up to speed on what is happening in my wonderful world of writing.

To start, I’m happy to announce, ‘The Calling’ will be published in January 2018 by NineStar Press it’s very exciting and honestly a little scary. It’s cool to dream this will happen then when it does, it kind of freaks you out.  There is a lot to do to get the story ready for publication as you can imagine.  If you have some time to check out NineStar Press here, they are a ton of wonderful books by some amazing authors and they are a good group of people to work with.

Next up, this year I have the honor of being a judge for the 2017 Rainbow Awards.  It’s exciting to be part of such an activity and I can’t wait for the award winners to be announced.  If you want to learn more about the Rainbow Awards check them out here.

Third, I’ve written a short story ‘A Dragon for Christmas’ its a cute short story and one I’m hoping to get published (fingers crossed).  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, you can read the blurb for ‘A Dragon for Christmas’ here.

On a more personal note, I’ve been busy working in the background on some new headshots and working with a few really good friends on how to not only market my novels but also myself.  It’s an interesting process one I didn’t think would be as difficult as it is.  It’s like this whole new world is sitting there and I need to figure out the best way to navigate it all.  So, as we move forward, you may see not only my photos change (may all that is fuzzy and warm take mercy on you when those come out), but also my website. There may be updates/changes to my Facebook Page and all of my social media as well.

Also, you’ll be happy to learn we are still doing our weekly meal in a box.  Its great and we still love it.  If you want to see pictures, let me know in the comments below, also, if you want an update on how we’re doing I’ll happily share.  There are some new developments.

Now more on the writing front, I’m still working on Book 2 of ‘A New World – Conspiracy’ and I’m working on a novella called ‘T.A.D.’. I’m about two-thirds of the way through ‘Conspiracy’ and ‘T.A.D.’ has its first draft finished and I’ve started the editing process so the writing is moving forward.  There are a few more stories that are floating around, but nothing nearly as far a long as these.

With respect to my blog, I’m changing my posting day to Mondays in hopes to get more traffic. I have to think about and pay attention to these things now.

Well that’s about it for this week.  Next week I have an exciting Author Interview coming up.  So, stay tuned.  I love to hear from you, so leave me a comment, drop me a line and remember to like, share and subscribe.  Until next week keep cool and #HappyPride2017

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