The Countdown Begins

Eleven days until Wicked Ambition releases!

Remember, that special fan pricing will expire two weeks after the book's release, so buying it early saves you money!

Oz and Ayla have been in my thoughts for nearly a year now. Actually, for longer than a year because one scene came to me while I was in the middle of Wicked Suspicion, Case and Nyx's book.

Getting scenes early happened to me while I was writing my first published book, and I'd stop what I was doing to write them down. And always by the time I got to the place where the scene should go, it wouldn't work. The characters had changed too much. Needless to say, I was leery about writing this Oz and Ayla scene down early.

But they were interfering with Case and Nyx and I couldn't get anything written. Finally, I thought, fine, I'll write this scene down just to get it out of my head. I need to get going on the story I'm supposed to be working on.

I grabbed my B6 planner/journal, wrote down all the dialogue and a tiny bit of other information, and hoped for the best. It worked, I was able to get back to Wicked Suspicion.

There wasn't a doubt in my mind that the scene wouldn't work when I got to the place it belonged. Only it did! I was shocked. Shocked! And relieved. I hate writing things that won't make the book.

Let me know what you think of Chapter 16. The second scene. That's the one I wrote more than a year early.

Odds and Ends

I don't have enough of any single thing I wanted to talk about to make a full post out of it, so I thought I'd just bullet point some of them.

• Every year, a mockingbird family has nested in one of the trees in my front yard. I always enjoy when their baby makes its appearance, but this year? No nest. I'm so disappointed.
  
  
•  I mentioned that I owned seven books in JAK's (writing as Jayne Castle) Harmony series. I own the anthology with the novella Bridal Jitters, too, but the source I looked at it called it .5 instead of 1 in the series. So between my Harmony collection and what the library owns, I can read the entire series. Almost. Guild Boss is not available. The publisher has the eBook priced at $8.99. Gah! I can get the audiobook at the library, but I'd rather read.
  
  
•  I mentioned the readathon helped me find some new authors that I loved. There's also a year-long reading challenge from the same group. I had to get a recommendation from one of my friends to fulfill one of the prompts because it's a genre I don't read. I now have another author to glom. I might have to find more reading challenges.
  
  
•  When I loaded up my kanban board for the next Paladin League book, I used page markers instead of full sized Post-it notes. It takes up less space and made it easier to load all the chapters. I think I'll like it?
  
  
•  I love having a reading journal! It's a little futzy using my sticker cutter to make book cover stickers and I'm definitely not good at decorating it, but it brings me joy. It also encourages me to finish books.
  
  
•  I was reading books on my phone or my iPad. Buying an eReader made a big difference for me in how much reading I do. It's much lighter than my phone and it's easier to hold it for long periods of time. I probably would have figured this out earlier if I could have found my Kindle. No, as of writing this, I still haven't found it. I gave it to my dad, and he passed away. I don't know where he put it and I haven't found it yet.
  
  
•  I think I have my weekly planning system figured out. When I'm sure, I'll do a full post.

Fiction Reading Journal Thoughts

I've discovered one big issue I'm having with my reading journal. I hate taking time to write out my thoughts/review of the books I'm reading.

I have pages of books (pages) with nothing except the book cover and a little decoration. I can't even remember my thoughts on some of the books because I read them at the beginning of May.

Oh, I meant to go back and write up what I thought. That's one of the reasons why I'm doing the journal. But I haven't actually done it.

Some of the pages are missing decor, too. The basics are there: the book cover, the sticker I have to print out the title, author, format, page numbers, dates read, etc., and the scrapbook paper I use underneath these stickers, but only a couple of the pages have all the decoration I want. I read a book where the hero plays hockey, and I thought I'd make stickers of hockey sticks and skates. I haven't done that yet. Not for that book or made stickers that represent the other books.

I'm less worried about the decorations, though.

Other issues I'm having: Remembering to write the book title in the front of the book. Remembering to look at my book bingo cards to see if I can fill them out. Remembering to fill in my Alphabet card.

Obviously, I made it too overwhelming. Next time around, I'll make it much simpler. The only thing I really need to worry about is recording my thoughts about the books I read. And doing the book covers. I like having those.

The Liminal Zone

This is one of those weird stretches of time where the book is finished (Wicked Ambition), at least from the creative side. Copy edits and inputting copy edits and formatting for release are still ongoing or waiting to happen.

But even though nothing requires the creative side of my brain, I still can't write anything new. Not yet.

I can only work on one story at a time, and in my mind, Wicked Ambition is still that book.

It's also strange because I feel like I should be working on something. I've been writing and writing and writing and now I'm not. It's bizarre.

The other thing, of course, is that I haven't had time to think about the next book (Wicked Temptation) except in a very high-level kind of way. I know my hero and heroine. It's Cal "Baggs" Baggnell and Iona Desmond. I know they had a relationship that ended, but that neither one of them have moved on. And I know who the bad guys are in this book.

That's about all I have at this point and it's definitely not enough.

Once my mind is off Oz and Ayla, I'll get out my notebook and start brainstorming, but my head isn't there. Not yet.

Read-A-Thon Results

Let's talk about the read-a-thon I did and my results. I realized I kept talking about it in general terms, but didn't give specifics.

I kicked butt! I didn't think I would get as much reading done as I did because I was working on revisions while it was going on, but I had breaks between the rounds of revisions and was able to get through a lot of awesome books. (And a few clunkers.)

But I found two books that were five-star reads for me! Both were authors I'd never read before. I love when that happens!

One was a book for the Recommendation from Someone Else prompt. It was a mystery with a strong romance in it, but I was unlikely to have read it (even with the recommendation) if it weren't for the read-a-thon. OMG, I loved it! I stayed up way too late on a Saturday night to finish it. Um, like 2am.

The other I found accidentally. It was for the Has Less than 300 Pages prompt. I originally had a book from my TBR slated for the prompt, but it was like 296 pages, so it was still long. I thought that there had to be something shorter and quicker that I could read. I started out going through more eBooks that I own, but it took so long to check them out one by one.

Somehow, I spotted something about short reads over on Amazon, clicked on the banner, and went with the first book listed. It was 101 pages. It was also so awesome that I've got more books from this author wishlisted at the library.

The read-a-thon also had me plowing through the Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz) Harmony series. I owned 7 of the books but hadn't read them. I wish I'd read them all in order, but I started with the third book. I love this series and literally couldn't read fast enough. Now I need to get my hands on the books that I don't already own.

Overall, the read-a-thon was a great experience, but it was also exhausting trying to read so many books in a month. I would maybe only do a couple of these a year. Maybe one in the spring (like this one) and one in the fall. And I know I didn't need to max out my points, but well, if you can't ace the thing, why do it?

Yes, I hit the highest level, Haunting Herbologist. Yes, I finished every book prompt. There were categories related to plants, like take a nature walk or make a vegetarian meal that I didn't complete, but anything involving reading? Nailed it!