Yesterday would have been my mother's 72nd birthday. Yeah. She's been gone for 12 years now, and so she never got to know her granddaughters.... and now I'm 50 and looking at gearing up to send my own kids off into the world in the next 5-10 years. Oy. Can't I just have them live with me forever? (Anyway.... not really a fan of March, y'all.)

Okay... if ANY of you notice me messing with THESE COVERS.... EVER. AGAIN. Please come to my house and slap the crap out of me. I'm done redesigning this series, and so next up is book #4 and it is a DOOZY! 

Elliot and Sky are going on an adventure -- to save their family, and not get themselves killed in the process, but they just might end up saving the world. Not too shabby for a couple of kids from the Oregon Coast. 

Now, Finding Mallory also got a new cover... that should be live tomorrow for the ebook and then the paperback should be caught up tomorrow afternoon at some point. I love this cover.... there's Mallory, setting off to find herself, find safety, find her future without giving herself away this time. 
YOU GO, GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My background is English literature. I was an honors English student throughout high school, and then into college... English literature classes were my Safe Zone as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I graduated with a wildland conservation degree from the College of Forestry at the University of Washington, with only needing a Shakespeare class for the double degree, but after seven years in college and nearly 200 credits, I was done. 

It all worked out, because after I graduated, what I wound up doing was newspaper reporting. Funny. I was writing. A LOT. FOR YEARS. I worked all over the Pacific Northwest, writing whatever they needed for the paper -- house fires, Baby New Year stories, school districts, city council meetings, Santa in the parade.... on and on and on. Everything. I wrote everything. And read everything. I read three or four books a week, lived at Half Price Books, had stacks of romances, mysteries, and thrillers PILED all over my house... and then I became a mom. And my thoughts turned from writing the news to writing stories. 

So, the point of that little trip through the past is, I landed on a book on craft and story structure that explained the anatomy of a story in ways I had NEVER thought of before, which is crazy. Shawn Coyne is the author of The Story Grid. After working as an editor for the Big Six/Five in New York City 4-EVER, he has poured his knowledge into this book... and blown MY mind. 

I'm currently writing COMBAT IN THE COLD.... I should have been done already, according to the little time frame thingy I had written for myself at the end of 2017. I had started it and had about 25,000 words done... when I started reading The Story Grid.

NOW, I have stepped back and plotted out the entire story -- I know what my inciting incidents for every Scene, Act, and both Story A and Story B are. Because they all have them --- every level of story has to have an order to it, because that's how our minds process a story. Derp. I have also mapped out my Complications, the Crisis, the Climax, and the Resolution for every of those sections as well, and it's GLORIOUS. 

So, NOW I am going to write that book and see how the Story Grid's road map works as I hammer out the last thriller in Elliot's story. I have to hurry, because they are traveling to the Arctic Circle and it's COLD UP THERE. 

Once COMBAT is out the door and Elliot and Sky are put to bed, I will be busting into my new series, currently titled THE CORDELIA SERIES (but that may change). The first book is THE WONDERLY GHOST, and it is also about 40,000 words done -- but now that I have the Amazing Plotting Plan from The Story Grid People, we'll see how it all comes together after I reopen that file. 

Peace! Oh, yeah.... and go see BLACK PANTHER!!!! 

You should have seen the earliest versions, of both the novels and the covers. I've learned a LOT since 2010, and while I've watched so many others soar into millionairehood around me, I'm still puttering around over here with my little books, but something's changed since this summer. Perhaps some weird combination of things -- the kids are older and more able to function without me 24-7, life is operating at a somewhat even keel right now, we're in our house and no longer renting (renting does weird things to my psyche because I never feel settled), all of which leaves me more thinking time, more working time, or maybe because all of the nitty gritty details about publishing in general don't scare me anymore. 

What really helped with that was getting out there, meeting other authors, finding the best pages on FB to follow, learning from them -- and that means learning what to do and what NOT to do -- and then whittling all of this down into a handful of lists:

• To sell books, you need THREE THINGS: a great book, a great blurb, and a great cover. 
• As far as marketing goes, do THREE THINGS WELL: have a newsletter, have a great comic con presence, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, do book clubs in your area for word of mouth, create great tie-ins for your series... choose THREE and excel with those three things. 
• And write every day. EVERY FREAKING DAY. 

And that's it. That's basically my business plan at this point. So I need to get to work. 

AIRTABLE
I have started using Airtable -- I'm working my way up to the pro plan, but I've found I'm able to do quite a bit with the free templates available to slobs like me. So far, I used their "Project Tracker" and renamed it "Novel Tracker," and now I have this great database where I've plugged in the books already published, plus all of the books I have planned. So far there are 22 books on that list (6 are already out) and I have more books swirling around in my head. 

But at a glance, I can see their titles, their series, if they're plotted, date for final draft, date to betas, date to publish, ISBNs, notes, etc. Plus, everything can be color-coded and that makes everything more fun. So I'm excited to work in more of their templates into my business plan. Excel has always freaked me out a bit, and AIRTABLE is sort of a mix of scrapbooking and Excel. If that makes sense. It probably doesn't, but that's okay. LOL 

Off to work on the daily word count! 

I'm excited to report that CONFLICT in the COVE is heading to beta readers this week. I had some other projects show up last week and the week before, but now I'm back on track with the third release in my Elliot Lake Mystery Series. 

My daughters and I started painting rocks a few weeks ago, and of course, it's taken over the entire dining room. I posted the rocks to Facebook and now I have orders for Christmas. :-) 

​Art is life. 

The black trees on the blue night sky are my "Treetangle Rocks" --- I have many, many, many more of these coming. 

April showers, and oh what showers we had in April. And March. And OMG January and December... all the way back through to October 1. We're approaching 90 inches of rain in Astoria since October 1, and up in the hills above town, the measurement soared past 112 inches sometime last week. That's a ton of water. 

But April showers bring May flowers, and this is our third day in a row of real, honest-to-Apollo sunshine. But May will also be bringing something else back into the world: Treetangle books to Amazon. ​

I'm trying to work faster, more efficiently, but there are always things vying for my time and energy. Like, my daughter was treated horribly at her track meet over the weekend, but then we had dear friends visit Saturday night, but then Sunday morning while I was still pissed over the track meet fiasco, I dropped my cell phone in the pancake batter of pancakes that I can't even eat because of my pre-existing condition. BUT -- the sun was OUT and every day is a new day with no mistakes (thank you, Anne Shirley!). 

​And now these babies are heading back to market, all shined up and fancied up and soon their cousin books will be finished and published too. Because you can't make a career out of one book. (Unless you are that guy who wrote about Matt Damon being stranded on Mars.) 

I've made a little checklist and will be clicking off each book as it once again hits Amazon in ebook and paperback. 
A checklist that will sit here mocking me if I'm unable to check off every damn book by the end of May. So bug me about it! 

Four have been out there before, but Chaos at the Coast is new. It was so funny going through all of my novels prior to their re-release, because I'd forgotten so much about their stories, it was like revisiting old friends. They all missed me and are screaming at me for sequels. Of course. Adds that to the checklist. 

Don't miss that I have the first chapters (or two, in the case of Six Dates with Jenna) here on the website to read, and also don't forget to sign up for Treetangle Talk, the newsletter associated with Treetangle Publishing. 

Be well and keep reading. 

Just a quick note to get this blog kicked off right. 

I'm in the middle of Crazy Month, and while I know most of us have crazy lives every month, March 29, 2017 was our 20th Wedding Anniversary, and April 29, 2017 is my 50th birthday. ***WHAAAT!!!!***

That is what I mean by CRAZY MONTH. 

Last year, on my 49th birthday, we were handed the keys to our new house in Astoria, Oregon -- the Buttercup Cottage. Built in 1918 by the Larson family, it's adorable and quirky and close enough to the Columbia River that we can hear the sea lions barking in the harbor and the Astoria Trolley dinging its way up and down the river. 

For our anniversary, we held a shindig for whoever could come over and share our grill and Party Salad -- and the cottage was packed! Now for my birthday this year, we will also be celebrating Daughter #1's 14th birthday, because her birthday falls on a Tuesday this year, and the other Saturday is the day of Daughter #2's final track meet! Welp. Did you follow all of that? 

So April 29th will be fun - my 50th, Emily's 14th, and the Buttercup Cottage's first anniversary of being our home in the Goondocks. 

Where I'm at with Treetangle Publishing -- I have one and a half books edited for re-publication. This website is virtually done, I've been adding links in the sidebar of this blog page, and I've been working on nonfiction for those pages. I will be tossing more merchandise options on Zazzle too, because there's more to life than pretty mugs. 

This blog post is a bit early, because I have only told some friends and my local writing groups about Treetangle Publishing... but by the end of April I want to be dropping my books back online in order to jump back in the game!