The past few weeks have been a little slow, but so much has happened that I’m crazy excited about! So give me a moment to comb through my journal and arrange the events in chronological order rather than vomiting it all out in a frenzy!

I got my first proof copy of Fire’s Hope at the end of July and it arrived two days early. I had intended for it to arrive while I was with my two best friends, but alas it showed up right before I had to leave. Of course. The box was wet, I couldn’t wait, I had to see my baby. So I called my girls, ripped open the box, stared at the white edge of the pages dumbstruck then slowly took it out. I burst into tears. I did not expect to be crying that hard when I saw it for the first time, but I was sobbing.

After all my hard work I can finally hold Fire’s Hope in my hands, flip through the pages, and enjoy that lovely book smell.

After a much needed cry with my girls and some time to flip through the pages it was on to the next adventure!

I went to one of Bree Barton’s book signings in DC to celebrate the release of her debut Heart of Thorns, and she was kind enough to invite me and my violing buddy to play two songs for her crowd. We were so nervous but Bree is the most positive and sunny person I’ve ever met. It was a joy to celebrate this release with her, and I also made off with a signed copy of HoT and a few for my friends.

So now I have a proof copy to read through and check. I have about as much motivation to read FH again as anyone would after writing the darn thing, editing the devil out of it, proofreading it some more, and then reading it again. But, I am steadily getting through it and as soon as it’s ready, I’m going to set a few updates on KDP and Createspace and FH will be going live for preorder!

But in the midst of the summer’s craziness, I’m still looking to make time for my friends so when my girl, long time critique partner, and around best Snow Almond ever, texted me that she had a great prop for some bookstagram pictures, I dragged her over to a photo session.

What she whipped out still floors me! A Mark Halo Candle!

I had been talking about doing candles for my characters because I saw a lot of other authors doing it for their books and I love candles! Candles all day!

I jumped back, hands over my mouth is total disbelief that I was seeing my character’s name on the label of a candle! Thank you so much again to Jessi at Novel Heartbeat Creations for making such an awesome candle!

 

It smells like Black Tea and Crackling Firewood which is so perfect for Mark.

I want to do more for other characters like Kip and Sil. Ocie’s is easy, she’s just the first beach candle I can find at Target.

 

 

 

So what a cool summer, right? Well it keeps getting better! I decided to take a crazy adventure last Saturday (Aug 18) to Arlington for the All About the Indies convention where Kristen Martin would be a Keynote speaker. I’m not super comfortable driving up that way and I was kinda crunched on time but I managed to get there and I had enough time to listen to Kristen’s whole talk.

I feel like I met my hero! Kristen has built such an amazing platform around positivity and writing. All her videos have been so instrumental in how I learned the self-publishing business and I’m definitely following her model. She was super sweet, signed my copy of Shadow Crown and I grabbed her latest book Be Your Own #Goals. And of course, she was super tall.

I met a bunch of other indie authors and made some new friends, and I’m almost ready for the pre-launch of Fire’s Hope. It’s scary guys! This is all new to me, and I still have some doubts about getting my baby out into the world. I always feel like there’s more research to be done and every step I reach seems to introduce three more.

But I’m still journalling everything and keeping all my thoughts organized for the most part. My big goal for August has been to draw 6 promo portraits for Fire’s Hope and I’m happy to report I’m on 5/6 and they’ll be appearing around instagram next week. For now here’s a little teaser.