Category: The Blog

Welcome to 2022! I’m going to try to keep my blog updated better this year.

My focus for the first half+ of the year will be finishing existing loose ends to make room for Shara to return. This includes the following series: Her Irish Treasures, Queen Takes Darkness, and Queen Takes Sunfires. I would also REALLY love to get A Killer Need wrapped up. However, that’s going to take so much work… I don’t know that I’ll be able and willing to hold off on Shara long enough to tackle Charlie. We’ll see.

First up, Her Irish Treasures. Leprechauned is set to release March 1st, though if I finish it earlier, I’ll probably release it sooner. I’ve struggled a bit to get back into the flow of this story, since I wrote Shamrocked back in 2018 or so. However, the audio rights are already lined up, so I’d really love to get this series finished and available. Once I do get into the Irish flow, I plan to stick there and finish the trilogy with Evil Eyed.

What really rocked my world with this series is how it ties into Shara’s Their Vampire Queen world, especially once I talked with Merlin in Queen Takes Camelot. Just another branch of the goddess tree…

I’m still Zooming with Molly about five times a week. We’ll continue our sessions as much as possible. I need to find time to get at least two more sprints in during the day to keep up with my goals. Four would be better. I’m slooooow but steady, until I can finally see the finish line. I’m almost to that point with Leprechauned, so it’d be great if I could finish it this month!

WTFIJW (What the Fuck is Joely Writing?!?!)

I usually post these in the Triune (Facebook group) but I realized I hadn’t blogged in a while and thought I should try and get back into the habit. (Incentive to join the group – I’m running giveaways every day through Sunday for some signed goodies I picked up from BABE 2020.)

I’ve been pretty quiet the last few days, weeks, and maybe a month. I am still working the Evil Day Job, which I’m extremely grateful for and glad the entire company is able to work from home. It’s been fun to see team members join me at home (I’ve been a telecommuter since 2000) and it’s pretty much business as usual, except for not being able to find certain items in the stores. The girls are all home and the school year is over other than online classes for all three. Poor Middle! She’s a senior this year and missing out on prom and graduation. The school is going to try and schedule an event later in the year.

I believe I’ve posted here before in very general terms about the “C and D situation” I’m going through right now with That Man. His C is back and the D is still delayed. It’s been a stressful few months waiting on everything. Mediation was postponed thanks to Covid-19 and now he’s dealing with health issues, so I really don’t know what’s going to happen, how long it’s going to take, and what that all means. I feel stuck. Trapped. Unable to move on with my life. And it sucks.

For someone who really needs stability, all this uncertainty is draining.

I hadn’t been able to write much at all. It’s been all I can do to keep up with the EDJ, and I’m sleeping way more than usual and still feeling exhausted. Needless to say, I’m pretty behind on everything.

I know many of you are frustrated that I haven’t written anything really long and meaty since Queen Takes Triune. My plan was for Sunfires2 to be a really nice long book, but the D is still dragging on, and my creativity has taken a huge hit. I delayed the preorder 30 days, but I may need to delay it again. We’ll see. I don’t want to risk losing my preorder ability for a year, but I can also only do what I can do.

The shorter stories may seem like a distraction, and not worth your time. But I can say from a creative standpoint, they’re easier for me to do right now. They don’t take as much extended mental and creative flow to put together. Usually I just need the idea, and they’re small in scope and I can pull them off in a few days rather than months.

Another benefit of writing short stories: they help me with the inertia problem. Bodies that are at rest are really hard to get moving again. The same goes for words and the creative flow. I had been blocked this entire month, but once I had the story idea for Coterie, the #BBBPublishings Mafia anthology, I wrote it in a matter of days. Now that I’m making words again, I’m going to switch back to one of my other projects (Queen Takes Venom and Sunfires2) and see if I can keep that momentum going in my favor.

4thewords has also been a great help to get me making words again. Small goals, even 100 words in 30 minutes, may not seem like much, but again, inertia takes a huge amount of effort to overcome initially. Once I’m moving again, it takes less work to keep that momentum. I may not be fast right now, but I’ll take what I can get.

Stay safe and healthy everyone.

Long live House Isador!

PS Order updates. Shipping from KDP has been sloooooooow but I did finally get all the TVQ books back in stock. I’l be doing my best to get the next orders out this weekend.

These are a few of the tools I’ve been using over the past few months to reduce my stress and improve my overall wellbeing. Some of the links are affiliate links.

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. I first read this book over a year ago and it was one of the first steps I took to making a better practice of self-care. I started doing meditation right away, but the visualization and affirmations took longer to stick.

I used Headspace to learn about meditation. I really love his sessions on creativity and self confidence and have listened to both series at least twice.

The I AM Journal. This was one of the first tools I started using to get into a better gratitude habit. I loved the idea of writing down only THREE THINGS every day that I was grateful for and concentrating on my feelings. What I wanted most of all. How I would feel when I achieved those things. I don’t currently use this journal just because I don’t like to have yet another place to write stuff down in. But it got me started into the habit I’m using now.

I bought a copper fountain for my office and I love the constant gentle sound. I’ve got some crystals in it too that I’ve collected from various places. I don’t know that they make me feel better, but they’re pretty and I like them. Water is important for my muse (I’m starting to understand this more). As in my wizard story Nightgazer, “wellspring” is a metaphor for where the magic happens. I often picture Story bubbling up inside me like a fountain, and the sound reminds me to let the water — and the words — flow. It’s not so much work/effort, but tapping the well and letting the water come.

My Himalayan salt lamp is always on in my office. I love the gentle, warm glow that it casts so much that I bought another for my bedroom. I also have these salt tea light votives that I use in my office and around my tub when I take a bath. Again, I don’t know that they truly make me “feel better” fighting the negative ions in the rooms and such, but I *like* them. The glow is very comforting and makes me feel good when I see the light.

When I start a low-key sprint, I always do better if I put on my headphones and use one of my apps to help block out noise. Usually Naturespace but lately I’ve also been using Brainwave 35 with my own playlist of songs like Tibetan Singing Bowls, Crystal Bowls, etc. Very zen and relaxing.

Be Focused Pro is my timer app with set 10, 15, or 25 min sprints. The hardest part for me is stopping at the break and actually starting again. It’s easy for me to get distracted. I typically struggle with 25 mins. I lean toward 15 usually, but sometimes all I can manage is 10 mins. I do what I can when I can.

I’m experimenting with Productive – Habit Tracker this week to keep an automated list of my basic self-care tasks each day. So far I really like it, but I don’t know that I’m ready to spend for the Pro version yet. I love that it lets me color code items (so I have gold stars for sprints, and blue for zen stuff like meditation) and it keeps stats for me – though long-term, it’s hard for me not to get too focused on perfection and stressing about checking off an item. Which defeats the whole point of relaxation!

I’m still experimenting with visualization tools.