Snippets

I’m writing this at the cabin (yay) with a raging headache caused by my own stubborn experimentation* (ugh). Please forgive the general erratic-ness and worse than usual grammar. There is neither rhyme nor reason to anything in this post: it’s full of random mess.

I’m not sure how summer is half over already, but here we are. Horde Leader is back from marching band camp already and parade season is finished, most of the big birthdays of the summer are already done, and our week at the cabin is coming fast. After that we’ll only have a few weeks left before school starts. I’m up here for a few days this week in the quiet working (nice job setting up wifi, fam!) and swimming on lunch breaks with Sarah (no boys, no chill’uns) which is utterly lovely.

SK and I have been watching House of the Dragon this summer, which prompted him to watch Game of Thrones because he had littles when it came out and never saw it. So he’s been bingeing GoT and I’ve been watching most of it again (there are a few scenes I just flat out refuse to watch ever again. Mostly with The Mountain, but a few others as well.) I feel like we may need a serious palate cleanser after 80+ hours of GRRM grimness. Like an Alien marathon or something. Good lord.

I know! DEADPOOL MARATHON!

ahem. See what I mean about being all over the place? I managed to finish reading a book I’ve had on my TBR pile for a month or so last night (The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner. Pretty good!). I’m behind on all my reading this summer. Goodreads gently reminds me every time I log in that I’m currently five books behind schedule for this year’s reading challenge. Oops. I also owe a few reviews to both NetGalley and World History Encyclopedia. June and July have been a bit of a shitshow when it comes to balancing work, writing, family, and everything else, so everything else has fallen by the wayside.

If you’ve been following my socials or my new page here, you’ll know Defying Shadows now has its final cover and its first pre-order link. Woohoo! Editing is coming up, then typesetting, so in the next month I need to get some final bits and bobs done (dedication, acknowledgements, that sort of thing). It’ll be out on 2/21/25, so I’ve also been working on marketing and author event/book launch ideas, which is wholly new territory that scares the bejesus out of me. I am 100% not a camera-facing person, so BookTok and Insta videos are shudder-inducing. But I DID have occasion to say in Barnes & Noble the other day “I’m an author, my book comes out in February, WOW I just said that right out loud and it feels so weird! Is there someone I can speak to about author events?” and the bookseller grinned and giggled with me, and gave me the manager’s card. No matter what happens with this book release, I’m savoring every giddy moment that hits me like that one. I wasted too many giddy and excited moments trying to look cool or be nonchalant or hide my feelings, or diminish myself when I was younger: this whole book experience is just too amazing to waste like that.

I haven’t forgotten about the novel. The never. ending. novel. Sigh. I wrote a chapter a month ago and haven’t looked at the manuscript since. It was a fun chapter to write (bloodthirsty, but fun). I know where I want things to go, I know what needs to be rewritten/pulled out/changed to set things up for books 2 and 3. I have a plan. Here I am on the blog instead, with a headache that will send me to bed early, grumpy that yet another of my favorite drinks is no longer tenable. I’m hoping to get a good chunk of the last few chapters done in August. I’ll try to do better about updates here on what’s happening, though. In the meantime I leave you with the view I had from my office today.

Contrary to popular thought, I did get quite a bit of work done. I also swam at lunch and perhaps crisped myself slightly when I was done working for the day. Oops.

*I don’t know if it’s my cancer meds, some other meds I’m on, or that last round of the ‘vid I had a year or so ago, but I can’t drink alcohol without getting an instant, terrible, stabbing headache. I stubbornly tried a few different types in hopes it was just the tannins in wine, that I could still tolerate a bit of whiskey or scotch, or Baileys in coffee. ALL of my favorites give me the same reaction a few sips in: a violently rude stabby throbbing above my left upper sinus, like a jerk cave troll is trying to bust out of the top of my head. We hates it, precious. Once in a while I’ll try a sip of something to see if this unwelcome effect has gone away. Tonight it was chocolate Baileys, and I got three sips.