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!