0 Comments
7/19/24
I blinked, and suddenly two months had gone by. Honest truth, I never meant to vanish like this. I had plans to share all sorts of things and somehow none of it ever got posted. I apologize, and I come bearing gifts as part of my apology: The Chef, book one in my Princes of Toval series is available for pre-order at NSP and should be available for pre-order at Amazon and most other retailers imminently. The story is about Char, a chef who just wants to cook, and the adventure he gets pulled into as he travels between countries. There's action, romance, magic, and a lot of world building. At 62k words, The Chef is the second longest book I've ever written, so everyone who's been waiting for me to write a full novel, this is for you! The Chef is slated for release on August 27th, which is coming very soon. As always, if you buy with NSP, you can get it four days early. If you want a sneak peek at the cover, I've literally posted it everywhere. LoL But I'll make a formal cover reveal soon. The Prince, book two in my Princes of Toval series, is also making progress. I received the first round of edits yesterday. As always with round one, there's a lot to fix, but it's looking really, really good so far! I won't spoil The Chef by telling you more about The Prince just yet. You'll have to wait until after The Chef comes out first, although I do have a tentative blurb available on my site if you're interested. I can't talk about the first two books in the trilogy without also mentioning book three, The Spy. I'm still plucking away at writing it. Everything is set up for the big finale. Problem is, I need a good chunk of uninterrupted time to write it and real life keeps interfering. Part of that is my own making, what with the trip to Japan and then an entire week earlier this month with my brain completely turned off while I was working on my sunburn at the beach. Part of it is outside my control (I blame my sisters and they know why, LOL). And the last part is work is kicking my butt right now, so I'm returning home every afternoon too exhausted to do more than flop on the couch and watch bad anime. I am very hopeful I'll find some time soon, but it won't be this weekend as I'm editing The Prince instead. Lastly, for anyone that's been keeping an eye on my website in my absence, you would have seen that I posted a new cover in the coming soon section. One of the things I meant to write a blog post about and never did is for my Witch's Circle series. All three books in the trilogy have been combined into one book released in print! If you're like me and the feel of a real book in your hands completes the reading experience, you can buy Witch's Circle in print at most major retailers. Here's the link for Amazon. I have a couple more surprises up my sleeve, so keep an eye out because I'll be sharing those soon too! 5/26/24
I hope everyone in the US is having a good and meaningful Memorial Day weekend! I am at the beach. Listening to the waves crash on the sand is very meditative. Where I live it's too cold to go swimming, the water is basically melted ice at this point, so instead I've been relaxing in a beach chair with a book. I am trying to catch up on some reading I had to set aside for the same reason I haven't been able to write in so long. Luckily, clearing my mind and finally getting some real R&R has allowed the words to start flowing again. Writing is happening for the first time in months! So far I have added about 4k words to The Spy. I think I successfully navigated the low point in the action where I needed to do some character development. We'll see what my lovely editor says when I send this to her about my level of success. Lol I am starting to build back up to the final climax with the last big battle scene, and then I'll have two (possibly three) epilogues to add to this book to tie up both the book itself and the entire series. I'm still estimating about 50k words total, but we'll see. Once I'm finally done with The Spy and it's off to its resting phase before I give it a final edit and submit it, I think I'm going to stay away from writing longer books for a bit. Everyone really loved Gifting a Dragon's Heart and Soul Bond, and I definitely think intermixing publishing big series with shorter one-shots is a good way to keep myself from burning out. I therefore still want to work on Cantrip next, although that story will be tough since I want to add in some poems as magical incantations. I'm thinking it'll max out around 30k words, which is exactly what I need right now before diving into something really complicated again (like Vivary Tales). I still have about 10k left to write in The Spy first, so we'll see whether these plans are still viable then. 5/5/24
Happy Cinco de Mayo, Revenge of the Fifth, or simply May 5th. I hope you did something fun on this lovely Sunday. I finally got my faulty mattress replaced today. There's been a dent right down the middle for years, and for some reason it never clicked that mattresses aren't supposed to have dents. I spoke with the company I bought it from, they measured and said a four inch dent means it's defective, and I went and picked out a new mattress. I sleep on it for the first time tonight, so I have my fingers crossed that I'll sleep well. Aside from that, my weekend has been all about spring. My sister came over and helped me plant my annual garden. She does a wonderful job with the window box every year, and I got my vegetable seeds planted, so we'll see what grows. Unfortunately, the trees and bushes are all in bloom, so I've been sniffling and fighting off a sinus headache. Pluses and minuses with spring, I guess. All of which means I haven't had the time or energy for writing. I haven't touched any of my stories. They're all clamoring in my head: "write me!" But I needed to strip my old bed this morning to get ready for the mattress delivery, then run to the grocery story so I'd have food, and then get some other chores done too. By the time I actually had a moment to write today, the energy was gone. Plus, I received the second round of edits for The Chef so what limited energy I've had all week has gone to that instead. I will say, The Chef looks amazing. The story turned out to be everything I hoped when I first thought of the idea of a chef getting angry because someone was waving a bloody sword near his pot of bubbling oatmeal. Now that the second round of edits is complete, I should get a release date and we'll start working on the cover. I should have more exciting news to share about it soon. In the meantime, I'm off to explore my new mattress while hoping the allergies go away. Happy spring, everyone! 4/27/24 I decided it was time to start knocking places off my bucket list, so I went ahead and planned a trip to Japan. While I was planning I had an epiphany: if I was going to fly fourteen hours to basically the other side of the world, was there an opportunity to see more than one country? I added South Korea to my plans. Finding a trip took some time, since I wanted to see everything (impossible) and to do everything (also impossible). I settled on a trip that was ten days in Japan with an authentic Japanese-style onsen experience, and five days in Korea that included a day at the DMZ. The entire experience was magical. I went during the peak of cherry blossom (sakura) season so I saw a ton of gorgeous flowers, got to sleep on a proper futon in a tatami mat room after soaking in a traditional hot springs bath, and in Korea I was able to explore a tunnel in the DMZ the North Koreans dug during one of their failed plots to invade the south.
I can definitely see the architecture featuring in a future story I write. Massive wooden columns holding up multiple floors, intricate carvings everywhere, and the beauty of the sweeping roof lines could all make an appearance. Also, some of the defensive formations were unique to this style of building, so I would like to incorporate that into a book too. I don't know in which book just yet, but you will see it at some point. Possibly in a story tentatively titled Cantrip, which I haven't yet added to my actual to-do list. I had hoped between the fourteen hour plane ride to Tokyo, or the fourteen hour plane ride out of Seoul heading home, or on one of the lengthy bus trips to get to various destinations, I would have time to write. All I was able to work on was the opening scene of Cantrip, which was inspired by some beautiful misty mountains I drove through in Japan.
After I returned from my trip, I had a couple of days to do laundry and check my email at my day job before I hopped in my car to drive to my parents' for Passover. Again, I had hoped to have time to work on The Spy, which is soooo close to being completed, but instead I made a chocolate-orange sponge cake, a lemon sponge cake, apple cake, chocolate meringue cake, rainbow cake, and a lemon meringue pie while also helping to make traditional kugels and other foods for the two big dinners (Seders) my parents were hosting. I didn't get a chance to sit down until this past Thursday, and I was so exhausted I couldn't see straight, let alone try to write. Baking like this is always a lot of fun, so I'm not complaining, but I am very behind schedule of where I thought I'd be with The Spy and the rest of my writing plans. Now that my trip has sadly ended and Passover is coming to a close on Tuesday, I am back to the real world and will hopefully find some time to write. I'll let you know when I start making progress again! 3/30/24
For many reasons this week has both dragged and gone way too fast. Every time I looked at a clock, it felt like the hands were moving backward, and yet I blinked and suddenly it was already Friday! I can't really put how odd this feels into words, so instead let me explain everything I've been up to this week. First of all, the response for Gifting a Dragon's Heart has been beyond positive. Not a single bad review, which is almost unheard of! You all really seem to have enjoyed my quirky sci-fi/fantasy crossover story. For anyone that missed it, Gifting is available for purchase at most major retailers. My next story on the docket for release is The Chef, which is completely different in style to Gifting a Dragon's Heart. Beyond the fact that The Chef is almost double the length of Gifting, it also has a lot more world building and a slower build up to the romance and the plot. I received the first round of edits for The Chef this week. It's amazing how much more time and effort editing 60k words is compared to all the shorter stories I've been releasing. I was so excited to be working on The Chef again, but this was another instance of the clock moving in the wrong direction. I'd think I had made a lot of progress and was enjoying the opportunity to play with this story again, and then I'd realize I had only finished five pages. In a 20 to 30k story, five pages is a ton. In a 60k story that's barely scratching the surface. Lol It took me all week to return The Chef to my editor for round two. Despite that, my goal is still to write more longer works so this process has been very rewarding. Speaking of writing, I added another chapter to the third book in the trilogy, The Spy, which concludes the fun that began in The Chef. I've finished the needed introductory parts to the second half of the story and now it's time to dive into the meat of the plot as the climax for this book and the series takes off. The Spy is currently 35k words long and I believe I have enough outlined to get it to 50k, which would put it in the longer range for my books. I had to pause writing this story when the edits for The Chef came in, so I hope I can jump back in where I left off. I want to finish writing The Spy as quickly as possible because there are a ton of other plots dancing around in my head, asking for their turn. If a book is listed on my Current Projects page, it is one of those stories demanding I write them too. The problem is if I start working on one of them, The Spy won't get finished. That's what happened with my Magnified trilogy; I got distracted by other series and plots, and now it feels too daunting to go back and finish the last book. Codified is absolutely still on my to-do list, but so is Dragon Spy and Vivary Tales, and the list goes on. There's a lot to look forward to, so I'm excited to see where the next few weeks of writing take me!
3/17/24
In fact, I have a book coming out in two days! For anyone who pre-ordered with NSP, you can read Gifting a Dragon's Heart right now! For everyone else, Gifting will come out at most major retailers on Tuesday. This fact literally dawned on me about an hour ago. I did send out a proper cover reveal in my newsletter a little over a week ago, but I also meant to re-post it here. I also wanted to do some more hype. Somehow, none of that happened. If I say I was distracted with writing The Spy, does that excuse me for not remembering to advertise properly? Probably not. Lol A combination of things have kept me totally fried. You remember from my previous blog post about how I was starting to catch up from being behind? Yeah, that failed. I'm still behind on everything. Work has been kicking my butt lately, so all I have the energy to do when I get home is nuke some leftovers and collapse onto the couch to watch anime. Weekends are therefore filled with all the things I couldn't get accomplished on the weeknights, and therefore aren't as relaxing or rejuvenating as usual. Truth is, I can find plenty of excuses as to why Gifting has inadvertently fallen by the wayside. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel! I am taking a lot of vacation very soon, and I am hoping the R&R will get me back on my feet. I will be traveling for fun and I'll be going home for the holidays next month. I'll tell you all about the traveling when I'm done, but I'm really excited! Anyway, Gifting a Dragon's Heart is available to read right now at NSP, and available for preorder at most major retailers until it comes out on March 19th! Please go and get your copy today! In the meantime, I have actually been writing. The Spy continues to go well. I have had a couple of fun ideas for my characters that are helping to bring the major plot points together, one of which I'm particularly eager to start writing in the next chapter. I also got a new idea for one of my older stand alone stories that was languishing. I'm hopeful that this idea will lead to something and I'll be able to get another story off my to-do list. We'll see. 2/21/24
Today it feels as if I'm behind on everything. One of the things I'm delinquent on is keeping all of you in the loop about my stories, so writing this post is a good start at catching up. There's a lot of information about what's going on to share, so here we go! The reception and reviews for Soul Bond have been excellent. Everyone seems to have enjoyed my Valentine's-themed short story! Mixing illegal magic with a good mystery and sweet romance appears to be what everyone wants to read this time of year. I don't currently have any plans for more short stories, but I will make sure not to ignore a plot bunny for one should it hop into my brain. Gifting a Dragon's Heart is my next story getting released. You can pre-order it at NSP, Amazon, or Smashwords right now! If you want, you can also add it to your Goodreads list, where positive ARC reviews are already coming in. Gifting officially comes out on March 19th, just over a month away. As usual, if you pre-order with NSP, you can get it four days early. For a sneak peak of the cover, head over to any of those sites. I should have the official graphic to share really soon! The Prince, book two in my Princes of Toval series, was accepted for publishing with NSP! I'm really happy, as this means it's just as good as the first book, The Chef. I expect the editing process for The Chef to begin really soon, but The Prince likely won't start that process until fall. I've made great progress writing the third book in the trilogy, The Spy. I have written over 30k words, which is more than halfway. I will definitely reach 50k total words, although I'm still aiming for closer to 60k. There was some major action right before the halfway point, which means this story needs to enter a lull as I set things up for the final punch. Making sure the slower build-up is as interesting as the fast-paced action is always a good challenge so I'm very hopeful the next few scenes turn out. Soul Bond is normally the most romantic night of the year, but for Hew, that night promises to be a nightmare. Afflicted by a terrible curse, Hew knows he must either submit to blackmail or get help. Magic is illegal, so Hew must break the law and dive into the seedy underbelly of the city, where he finds more than he ever believed possible. However, even with Ren’s help, breaking Hew’s curse might ensure their executions on Soul Bond Night, rather than experiencing the romance the holiday usually promises.
|
Coming Soon
The Chef
August 27,2024 Witch's Circle
May 15, 2024 Gifting a Dragon's Heart
March 19, 2024 Soul Bond
January 30, 2024 AuthorMell Eight is an author writing with NSP. For more information about Mell and her writing, please visit her website: http://melleightfiction. Tags
All
|