Author: Joely

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Solo Writing Retreat Day 1

Yesterday was all about finishing the book (Monstrous Heat). I was close, but still had 20 some pages to edit and then a new ending/expansion to write. I wasn’t sure how long that was going to take.

I allowed myself to wake up without an alarm clock and then had the first cup of coffee sitting outside on the covered deck. Pure heaven listening to the birds, watching the trees sway in the gentle breeze. A mama deer and her fawn grazed across the gravel road just 20-30 feet away. When I get to my forever home at Papa’s, I’m definitely going to need a similar place to sit each morning and soak in nature.

Cabin porch with a view of the woods

I brought plenty of breakfast and snacky foods, so I had a quick bagel and then got to work. I meet with Sherri via Zoom twice yesterday and we got several sprints in both times. I was into the new ending scene(s) when we said goodnight at midnight my time, so I just kept going. I finally finished Monstrous Heat at 2 AM this morning.

Wine, crackers, bread, bagels, and freshly ground coffee from home

It stormed several times last night. I went out on the deck until it got too wet and windy. Rain and hail pounding on the roof woke me up a few times but I slept in pretty late this morning. I love the look of a log cabin but it’s definitely noisy. The cabin pops and snaps continuously throughout the night. Sometimes I swear it sounds like someone walking across the floor. That’s the only time I’ve been a little scared to be myself. I wake up several times throughout the night, thinking someone is here. Luckily I’ve been able to get back to sleep without too much issue, though.

It was late enough last night when I finally went to bed that I didn’t get my nice long soak in the tub. I’ll shoot for extra time tonight!

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Solo Writing Retreat – Night 1

It’s just me and all the characters hanging out in my head for the entire weekend! I’m so excited I don’t know what to do with myself!

As a gift to myself, I booked a cabin in Eureka Springs, AR just like That Man and I used to do for our anniversary. Only this time *I* picked which cabin I wanted, based on criteria that are very important to me.

  1. The size of the whirlpool tub
  2. Writing area
  3. Quiet – for deep work thinking

This cabin is almost perfect. There were too many stairs up to the main level, and the bedroom is also in the loft, but I guess I can use the exercise. It was hot carrying everything in by myself but I hauled it all in and I’ve unpacked.

Lots of slate stairs
Lots of comfy places to sit and think

Love the tub — but the voyeur is a bit much.

Deer be watching

I’ll post more about the trip and what I hope to accomplish over the next few days!

PS I brought a lot of wine AND there’s a winery just down the road…!

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Evil Eyed is Locked & Loaded

It was touch and go for awhile. If Sherri hadn’t been able to edit the finished 50k over the weekend while I wrote the last two scenes, I never would have made it by the lock date (today).

If you’re a member of the Triune, we started a “finish date” pool on 7/11. I really thought I was almost done – but those last two scenes just went on and on. I was planning on 4-8k more, which would have brought me up to around 50K. Instead. I ended up needing another 13k. Evil Eyed finished at just over 56k.

As usual, I did my retrospection while the story is fresh on my mind. This book took MONTHS longer than I planned, so I expected an outrageously high number of sprints and a low word count average. Instead, what I found is that all the numbers were right on, other than a higher number of interrupted sprints. The real problem was just getting those sprints in. I had several days, even a full week here and there, off where I had either none or only one sprint per day. No wonder it took so long!

I had a ton of interruptions, both personal and professional. I wanted to be done before LLS but that didn’t happen. With all the shirts I needed to make and the preparation/packing, I lost several days. We also had some major personal/family developments last week that I’m trying to be sensitive about and not be specific, but all of that impacted my ability to focus. The short answer is that I don’t have to worry about That Man taking me back to court ever again.

It’s over. I’m finally free.

It may have taken me months to write, way longer than I ever intended, but I’m extremely happy with how Evil Eyed turned out.

Aidan is one of my most favorite characters to ever talk in my head.

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The Waiting

I know in the scheme of problems, having to wait for something isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s one of things that hit me the hardest. The uncertainty. The constant what ifs. It takes such a toll that I have little room in my head for anything else.

I’m still waiting for news on the latest round of divorce court proceedings to be resolved. No news is good news I guess, but I wish I knew what was going on.

The weight of not knowing hangs over me like a leaden cloud. I trudge onward because I have things I must/want to do. I’m just so. So. So. SLOW.

I had to bump the pre-order date for Evil Eyed again. I have been chipping away at it as regularly as I can but I just can’t seem to make that shift into high gear to power through to the end. Of course that puts me behind on everything else I planned for this year. I can’t work on the final edits for Monstrous Heat until Evil Eyed is done. I can’t get back to Darkness3 until both of these projects are done. But now it’s taking me so long that I need to shift over to Blizzard Bound first or I won’t make that deadline either.

I am deadline driven. But this is getting ridiculous, even for me.

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Shop is Closed

To prepare for the upcoming Literary Love Savannah conference, I’m closing the shop until at least 9/1/2022. Once I’m back from Georgia, I’ll refresh my inventory and list bookware and jewelry that I made for the conference that’s still available.

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ARC Team Interest Form

As you’ve seen the last few days, I’m making a big push to clean up some of my older stories, get them available wide, so I can make an even BIGGER push to wrap up Sunfires and Darkness. 

Because Shara is demanding my attention. Soon. 

If you’d like to join the ARC team and are willing to review BOTH older and newer stories, drop your info in my ARC Team Interest Form. I’ll be looking to add some new Blood in the coming months!

Note: please do NOT sign up if you’re only interested in Shara because it’ll be months before I’m ready to share her yet. Inactive members who haven’t been reviewing other books will be removed from the list prior to her return.

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Long Overdue Overhaul

Once I finally get started on something, it’s hard to call me off!

Since I started working on old backlist books Saturday, I’ve been going ham on all my admin tasks that I’ve been putting off.

  • Re-edit Free My Dragon
  • Re-edit Save My Dragon
  • Fix all the back matter through the Shanhasson series and reformat 4 books plus the boxed set.
  • Which lead to updating my bibliography document with all links (it was really out of date).
  • Fix all the back matter through the entire Connagher series in preparation for loading it wide. Reformat 7 books plus the boxed set.
  • Reload what I’ve already published to KDP, Kobo, and D2D with updates.
  • Update all of the books2read links with as many retailers as possible, especially for audio books.
  • Started hacking up the website, trashing a bunch of old pages that were cludgy or out of date.
    • Broke some stuff because I deleted it lol
    • Rebuilt missing pages and menus
    • Created missing book and series pages. (I still have a few to do but the current ones are updated.)
  • Created a new ARC list form to submit links. Preparing to do some clean up with this big backlist push to wide retailers.
  • Submitted another BookBub – braced for a YES this time! Please and thank you!

I still need to take a look at Their Vampire Queen back matter and reformat. It’s less bad than the really old stuff but it needs to be updated. I also created a mess for myself by changing my mind on how to handle the spinoffs, so I need to clean up my series numbering on KDP.

I’m still waiting on my Google Play and B&N accounts to update and let me publish, but I got my first book pushed through direct at Apple/iTiunes. Definitely needed a how-to guide for that beast! (And yeah I need to fix the blurb – I don’t like how it’s formatted.)

Getting there!

The next thing will be… deciding when to pull Their Vampire Queen out of KU and take it wide. I’m still on the fence on timing, but I’m hopeful that getting all this groundwork done will help me make that decision.

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Dragon Cursed – Free My Dragon

Okay, I’m ashamed at how long it took me to get back to these books, but I’m finally getting Free My Dragon (formerly Survive My Fire) and Save My Dragon (Formerly The Fire Within) back up at all retailers.

The key here is ALL retailers.

I decided in 2018/2019 when I pulled the old versions of these novellas for rebranding that I’d use this opportunity to publish direct through Kobo, Apple, GooglePlay, and B&N. I do have a few older wide books already, but I used Draft2Digital because I didn’t have the wide accounts set up yet.

Evidently, that was a mistake. Huge.

Because it took me until this week to finally make myself start this task.

Most of it is my fear of making a mistake. I’m comfortable with KDP and have been publishing there almost exclusively since 2017. With so many books, and so many direct sites, it was just too overwhelming. I couldn’t figure out how to start. In the beginning of my self-pub journey, I didn’t even format my own stories. So everything needed to be re-edited and then reformatted, at the cost of publishing something new (and shiny).

Well, for me, figuring out how to start was a dream. Writing has always been “Dreaming in Rhyme” for me. Friday night, after staying up late with my Beloved Sister so she could finish her book, I dreamed that I was working on Free My Dragon again. I took that as a sign. I mean, look at this cover. What the hell was I waiting for?