November Newsletter
Cyber Weekend Sale and other excitement!
And somehow, it’s the end of November!
Setting aside my many, many feelings about the outcome of the election (::sigh::), I’ve had a fairly productive month. It’s development season at work, so I’m hip-deep in mythological creatures on a daily basis. I also managed to complete my Novel Gauntlet goal a few days early! The WIP is coming along nicely. I need to spend a bit of time now ironing out some pieces and stitching them together, because in the course of drafting I’ve changed my mind about some major elements and rearranged the sequence of events three or four times. Chaos drafting in action! Hoping to hold my focus and continue making good progress in December.
News
Each book in the Aven Cycle is on sale today through Monday! If you want to nab the ebooks, they’re just $0.99 each. But if you love having physical copies of books — and let’s be real, these covers will look wonderful adorning your shelves — or if you want something wrappable to give to a reader in your life, the paperback editions are available for $13.99 if you get them directly from Ingram Spark!
Why buy through Ingram Spark? Because until Monday, they’re waiving their usual e-commerce fees for any books bought through these special sales links. That means you get the paperback books for $5 less than their usual shelf price and I make a bigger commission on each sale. Everyone wins!
Random Thoughts
I’ve had the opportunity this month to indulge in some retrospection.
First, in selling my books at the Carolina Renaissance Festival. This was so, so much fun! Huge, huge thanks again to Nancy of Arte of the Booke for inviting me to be a part of it.
I dusted off my elevator pitch — “The Aven Cycle is Roman-flavored historical fantasy; I gave the ancient Romans magic to see what they would do with it, and it was wonderful and terrible things, as you might imagine” followed by, if the target laughed at that or continued to seem interested, “The main thread follows Latona, a mage of Spirit and Fire, who has been told her whole life to keep it small, don’t draw too much attention, it could be dangerous, and she decides she’s sick of that and wants to learn to use her magic in bigger and better ways to help and protect her people.” — and gave it about a bajillion times. And as a result, managed to sell a lot of books!
I also got to just… talk with a bunch of people about the books and about writing, and that reminded me that I really like these books! Which may seem a funny thing to say, but I’ve sort of fallen out of the habit of talking about them a lot. It’s a bit natural; they’ve been out for years at this point, and my attention is often on other projects and other pieces of my career, so I’m just not hawking as much as I used to. I don’t live with them as much as I used to.
But… they’re really good, y’all! And I do miss talking about and thinking about that world. So it was nice to spend a weekend answering questions about a story so beloved to me.
The second thing was this: Earlier this week, I spoke to a friend’s English class about what, exactly, you can do with a BA in English. The class is one focused on professional development — which I think is so cool and exactly the kind of class there should be more of — and I was invited to share my whole post-school journey. Or, as I called it, my chaos career.
Because, on paper, my working life looks ridiculous. I’ve worked in a theatre, a museum, a community college, a bookshop, and now for a company that produces summer camps. I’ve worked with students from kindergarten through high school and college through life-long learns up to nonagenarians. I’ve published books, I’ve acted, I’ve been a Santaland elf, I’m a recreational rhetorician.
And yet, there are common threads lacing through all of that. A passion for storytelling. A love of history and a good head for research. A skillset tailored to preparing the tools that others will use to build an experience, whether in the classroom or at our camps or at a convention. Taken as a whole, it makes a strange sort of sense, how it all synthesizes together.
My parting advice to the class was this: Take chances. Develop resilience against inevitable disappointments. Seize opportunities when they come. Follow your joy whenever you can.
What I’ve Been Reading
(As always, these are affiliate links, and if you use them to buy books, I’ll get a small commission, which I will use to buy more books!)
From Blood and Ash, Jennifer L. Armentrout
Starling House, Alix E. Harrow
Sorcery and Small Magics, Maiga Doocy
The Hurricane Wars, Thea Guanzon
Snowspelled, Stephanie Burgis
Wrath of the Triple Goddess, Rick Riordan
Bit of a theme here, as I’ve been consuming some enemies-to-lovers plotlines as a way of setting the mood for my WIP. (I’d love to find some that have full-grown adult characters, rather than those in the fresh-faced 18-to-25 range, so if anyone has some good recommendations, hit me with them). Sorcery and Small Magics was a delightful surprise! I got that one as an Advanced Reader Copy on NetGalley, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I found it to have a delightful narrative voice and compelling characters all-around. I’m only annoyed that I didn’t realize until the end that it wasn’t a standalone and now I have to wait for the sequel!
Wrapping It Up
Yeah, I know I said a month ago that I was gonna be moving this newsletter to a new platform. I’ve started setting up beehiiv, but I’m not sure I’ll actually move there because I sort of hate the dashboard and really the whole UI. So, looking into other options. We’ll see. I’m trying to stay upbeat, but in a lot of ways the election knocked the stuffing at me (and I know I’m not alone in that), and that’s reducing my ongoing bandwidth. Frankly, I’d rather spend what energy I do have reading and writing!
Here’s hoping for a gentle December, y’all.