Hello everyone!
I hope those of you living in the U.S. of A. had a lovely Thanksgiving and that you found some great deals for Black Friday. For me Black Friday means driving to the bookstore in the morning filled with nerdy excitement and sipping a gingerbread latte haha. Thankfully (or tragically) the bookstore isn’t as popular as Walmart or BestBuy so I didn’t have to fight off any mobs to find the books I’ve been wanting.
Can you believe it though?? November has flown by! This weekend it will officially be December! I can’t believe time has been moving so swiftly. I especially cannot believe that it’s been almost a month since Alarum came out! Thank you so much to all of you who have bought it, read it, enjoyed it, and please don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads! Just another friendly reminder that book reviews affect business statistics and long story short they basically keep an author in their job. ♥
I’m sure you may have seen my posts on Facebook and Instagram already but if not I want to tell you about some amazing people who put together a surprise book launch party for Alarum!! I was absolutely speechless! Everything looked beautiful, the cake was delicious, and I felt so incredibly loved! Writing a book, especially as a self-published author, can be a very solitary journey and although I’ve spent months with these characters loving them and their story sometimes it feels like it ends there. But at that party I saw just how much support I have for my writing and I was blown away and so incredibly grateful.
Speaking about writing…Friday is the last day for NaNoWriMo! For those of who you are unfamiliar with that, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a yearly challenge for aspiring or established writers to write 50,000 words in 30 days. So from November 1-30 I was committed to working on my latest novel, Solus, and updating my word count each day. WELL, thanks to NaNoWriMo I have finally finished a full draft of Solus, book 2 in the Walking Shadows Saga!!! But of course the work isn’t done. Now I’ll move onto edits, beta readers, more edits, formatting, cover design, and eventually publication in June!
Solus features the character Bones (if you’ve read Alarum then you’ll know who I’m talking about). This book took several unexpected turns in both story and character. As always I worked hard to assemble a plot outline and as always the story took on a life of its own. But I’ve long ago learned that to try and force a story is to kill it. I can’t let it run around totally free but as long as I have those big goals for the story set then letting the world flow around that established trajectory is not only far less stressful but usually results in something better than I originally envisioned. Surprisingly to me this book ended up taking place entirely in the Southern Coalition, we get to see Sanctuary, a thriving city, the Black Mountains, and Bones has a lot of obstacles and curve balls along the way. I don’t want to spoil anything but I will say that a sibling relationship brings real heart to the story. It was totally unexpected, not at all planned, and yet it developed and is maybe my favorite thing about this book.
Okay okay that’s all good and well, but what about the Otherworld Trilogy??? If you’ve been dying to know what happens next after the unsettled end of Crooked Raven then don’t worry! Carrion Crow is written, has gone through two rounds of edits, and I’ve gotten feedback from my beta readers! Now that I’ve finished writing Solus I’m going to do a round of edits for it and then I will be 100% focused on Carrion Crow! Fingers crossed I can stay on schedule and it’ll be out in March 2019!
Although Fall is my favorite season it’s also the most busy and thus the most stressful time of year for me. But I’ve been working really hard to not keep you all waiting too long between books! My eyes are so tired haha That’s the downside of computers I guess… But it’s been fun! AND, although there are some mixed feelings about this, now that November has come and gone I can finally get excited about CHRISTMAS! Yes, that’s right, I can officially embrace my inner Christmas elf by baking nonstop, singing Christmas songs, jamming out to Trans-Siberian Orchestra while stuck in traffic, spraying my home with apple-cinnamon air freshener to go with the smell of our fresh Christmas tree, and just generally be low-key insane and unapologetic for it.
I hope you find time to have fun, to be still, to give, to read, and to hope this season. As for me I’m going to be doing my best to keep writing stories you’ll enjoy and to take a bit of rest in-between projects to simply breathe and love life. Formatting Carrion Crow for publication is the first big thing on my 2019 to-do list and you may know by now how much I loathe that process so wish me luck! haha
Stay tuned…
Talis Jones 