November 2022 – Jessie Mihalik

Hunt the Stars is a Goodreads Choice Finalist!

November 30, 2022 / Author News, Life, Writing

HUNT THE STARS is a Goodreads Choice 2022 nominee for Best Science Fiction!

Thank you so much to everyone who voted in the first round! As far as I remember (which, admittedly, isn’t far), this is the first time I’ve had a book listed at all, and to be in the final round with SF titans like Muir, Scalzi, Corey, and the others is truly an honor.

If you feel like voting for Hunt the Stars, you can do that over on Goodreads site from now until Dec 4. If you voted last time (thank you!) you can vote again because this is a new round.

My chances of winning are approximately zero, but extra publicity is always welcome, and maybe a new reader or two will find my books while going to vote for someone else. 😂

In other news, the weather here is doing its typical Texas thing. Yesterday was 82°F and completely lovely. We opened all of the windows in what is probably the last hurrah before we have to shut everything up for cedar allergy season, because cedar pollen is already starting to show up on the allergy reports. Bleh.

Then the temperature dropped into the thirties overnight and the high is in the fifties today. Plus the wind howled ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Go home, weather, you’re drunk.

Actually, come back with yesterday’s weather. After a scorching summer and a cool/gray last couple of weeks, yesterday was perfect.

But today is a good day for soup, and I have a bunch of extra potatoes from Thanksgiving, so potato soup it is! Mmm, soup. And even better, it’s not Thanksgiving leftovers. I’m Thanksgiving’ed out.

Until next year. 😂

Slow Monday

November 28, 2022 / Life

Mr. M was off last week, which meant I took the week off, too, and we had a nice holiday. We played video games and read books, and basically just snuggled down inside because the weather was cool and gray and wet.

On Thanksgiving, we had friends over for dinner, where we had too much food, as usual. But it was delicious! We cooked the turkey for the first time in a number of years, and it turned out really good. We used the Easier Roast Turkey recipe from America’s Test Kitchen (subscription required), and it was both easy and delicious. And pretty quick, too!

A wooden cutting board with cheese, nuts, crackers, and grapes on a marble countertop. — Thanksgiving in Four Parts

A golden-brown turkey resting on a plastic cutting board. — Thanksgiving in Four Parts

We also played video games with our nephews, which was entirely adorable. We played co-op games, and they’re still at the age where I look like I’m really good, but it won’t be long before they’re the ones carrying me through the missions, lol.

Today, I’ve been playing tech support for a friend’s mom, so I’m just now looking at my to-do list to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing this week. Copyedits for Capture the Sun are supposed to land on Wednesday, I think, so I really only have today and tomorrow before I need to dive into those. Then it’s two weeks of copyedits, then it’s practically Christmas.

Hold me.

My plan to get a project done by the end of the year is looking pretty shaky. Somehow the time between August and now just evaporated into smoke while the first half of the year took a decade. I’m pretty sure someone was messing with the space-time continuum. Or maybe I was just dragging through a deadline. One of the two for sure. :)

I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving, if you celebrated, or a lovely fourth Thursday of November if you didn’t!

Goodreads Choice Awards!

November 15, 2022 / Writing

It’s that time of year again, the time to vote for your favorite books of the year over on Goodreads, and this year, Hunt the Stars is listed in the first round of the Science Fiction category! 😍

The competition is absolutely stellar (see what I did there? 😉), so I’m delighted to be included. If you feel so inclined, you can vote for HTS or any of the other books for the next week or so.

After a doing a bunch of admin stuff last week, I’m back to writing this week. And it may or may not be a little short story about my favorite throuple. At least I’m hoping that it stays in short story/novelette territory, but we’ll see. It’s already almost 3500 words and shows no signs of slowing, so I need to figure it out, stat. Fair warning that it may come to nothing, but I’ll keep working on it as long as it’s fun. :)

I should be getting copyedits for Capture the Sun at the end of the month as it marches ever closer to publication. And I also have the fantasy romance that I’ve been poking at that’s around 19k words. Lots going on in House Mihalik this fall!

But mostly I can’t believe it’s mid November and the holidays are just around the corner. Where did this year goooooo? I still need to book flights, but I looked at prices yesterday and had to lie down. That’s what I get for procrastinating. 😭😭😭

Capture the Sun Cover Reveal!

November 10, 2022 / Capture the Sun, Writing

The cover for Capture the Sun is starting to roll out to retailers, so I guess it got approved, lol. I’m usually the last to know, and I’ve been sitting on this for months, so I’m super excited that I can finally share. 🎉 Behold Lexi and Nilo!

Capture the Sun Cover, featuring a man and woman in silhouette against a fiery orange sun with a futuristic city in the background. — Click to embiggen

The sun, the city, Luna… I love it all! In case you’ve missed it, this is the third and final book in the Starlight’s Shadow trilogy, and it’s publishing in June 2023. But preorders are up now, if that’s your jam. :)

Acclaimed author Jessie Mihalik returns with the thrilling conclusion to her Starlight’s Shadow trilogy. An intergalactic thief must join forces with the charming teleporter who stole her last job—and may now be her only hope for saving her former crew.

As a recovery specialist, Lexi Bowen’s jobs typically require more trickery and thievery than honest work. Her former captain might not approve of her flexible morals, but stealing artifacts for rich assholes pays the bills, and Lexi’s had enough of war and death. The FHP left her to die once; she doesn’t plan to give them a chance to finish the job.

Unfortunately, her latest contract takes her to Valovia itself—and right back into the orbit of Nilo Shoren, a Valovian teleporter who already cost her one payday and nearly stole her heart.

Armored against his clever charm, Lexi plans to get in, get the job done, and get out. But when her former crew goes missing in Valovian space, Lexi will have to work with Nilo to figure out what happened—and stop it—before the galaxy’s two superpowers can use the disappearance as an excuse to return to war.

Hunt the Stars, Eclipse the Moon, and Capture the Sun on a teal background.

Look at all three book together!! Aren’t they gorgeous??? 😍 I’m so thankful to the team who made them happen, which leads me to my next point…

On a less fun note, the HarperCollins Union workers are currently on strike for better wages because HarperCollins has refused to negotiate with them for nearly a year, and I support the striking workers 100%. The union is NOT asking readers to boycott HC books, but if you like books by HC authors and want to help the people who make them happen, here’s a thread of ways you can.

Honor and Shadows is Out Now!

November 1, 2022 / Honor and Shadows, Writing

Happy pub day to meeeee! 🎉 I have to celebrate extra hard because Halloween was a big bust at House Mihalik—not a single trick-or-treater darkened our doorstep, and I’m sad. I just wanted to see all the kiddos in their cute costumes and hand out the totally excessive amount of candy I bought. 😭

More candy for me, I guess. And Mr. M. I’m going to need backup to get through it, lol.

But back to the book! Honor and Shadows is the short story that was a preorder bonus for Hunt the Stars, so you may have already read it. The edited version did grow by about 4k words (up to 14k), but it didn’t change too much plot wise, so you can skip it if you want.

But if you do want to buy it, it’ll only cost you 99 pennies, so it’s a veritable bargain! Read it while you munch on leftover Halloween candy and/or recover from a sugar coma, whichever is most appropriate. :)

Honor and Shadows Cover, featuring a woman in silhouette against a space background.

Honor and Shadows is a 10,000-word prequel novelette set just before the start of Hunt the Stars.

The original rough draft was written as a bonus for preordering Hunt the Stars. This is a short action/adventure story with the Starlight’s Shadow crew before they meet the Valoffs.

Captain Octavia Zarola needs an infusion of credits—fast—if she’s going to keep her close-knit bounty hunting crew paid and fed. Tracking down an escaped embezzler on a backwater planet should be a piece of cake, but bounties are rarely as easy as they seem.

As the crew closes in on their quarry, the hunt becomes entangled with a local criminal overlord, and Tavi will have to decide what’s more important: money or honor, and how much she’s willing to risk for either one.

Get your copy!
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

Print books are still rolling out. The Amazon version is up now, but the version for independent bookstores and BN is working its way through the system.

That said, the print books are expensive for such a short story because they’re print on demand. I’m not getting rich on them, promise. :) If you do buy one, it’ll match the other Starlight’s Shadow books, and I did spent a stupid amount of time sweating the details, so I hope you like it!