Author name: Jessie

Jessie Mihalik has a degree in Computer Science and a love of all things geeky. A software engineer by trade, Jessie now writes full time from her home in Texas. When she’s not writing, she can be found playing co-op video games with her husband, trying out new board games, or reading books pulled from her overflowing bookshelves.

You All Are Awesome!

/ Writing

Thank you so much to everyone who emailed about being a beta reader! I thought I might get ten responses or maybe twenty if I really aimed high.

Sixty-one of you replied in the day the post was up. That’s amazing! ?

I’m a data nerd, so I broke people down into two categories: those who followed the directions and those who didn’t. I’m happy to report that fifty-three of you fell into the first category. [Please don’t email me and ask which you were, or ask for a redo, or whatever. Next time, follow the directions. Attention to detail is a good beta quality. :)]

Because I had so many extra people, I upped the number of betas to five. I read every email and picked two people, which was super difficult because you all are incredible, so I let the random number gods decide the other three.

All five have been emailed, so if you haven’t received an email, you didn’t get selected. I’m sorry. This won’t be my last beta call ever, and you’re welcome to try again next time.

I’ve received confirmation emails from three of you, but if your initials are J.F. or A.L., you might want to check your email. :)

The Queen’s Gambit Call for Beta Readers

/ Writing

I’ve finished writing The Queen’s Gambit. Yay! I’ll still post a chapter a week (go ahead and cue the sad trombone sound), so I’ll have a brief slice of time where I could make edits.

This is where you come in.

Have you ever wanted to beta read for a Real Live Author™? Now’s your chance! I’m looking for two or three beta readers to read the rest of the novella and share their feedback with me. Let me know what you loved, what you hated, and what made you scratch your head.

What you get: the rest of the novella weeks early, my gratitude, and the envy of your peers. More importantly, if you turn out to be a sane, reliable human who provides good feedback, then the odds that I’ll ask you to beta again (say for Polaris Rising or PR Book 2) go way up. …

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Writing Advice No One Asked For

/ Writing Advice

Now that I’ve sold a book, literally no one is knocking down my door, asking me to impart my writing wisdom to the world, but I will anyway. Prepare yourselves, it’s incredibly profound:

If you want to be a writer, write.

See, I thought I was being very clever there, but a quick search proves that Epictetus is credited with basically the same quote and that dude was born in 55 AD. So, for nearly 2,000 years, the advice to writers hasn’t really changed.

I know you may be looking for the shocking #7 on the list of “13 Things Every Successful Writer Does,” but I promise you, the best thing you can do is write. (The second best thing you can do is read. Read in your genre and outside of it. Read everything.) …

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Christmas 2017

/ Life

My husband and I grew up in the same small town and our parents still live about ten miles apart, so we don’t have to choose which family to visit for the holidays, which is super nice.

Unfortunately, our hometown is about eleven hours away via car. And because it’s a small town, flying in costs an arm and a leg, so we usually drive. Eleven hours in the car is a long damn time. We make it bearable by listening to audiobooks.

This year we listened to a book that couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. It was definitely science fiction, but it also had splashes of romance (in fact, I thought it was a romance until I didn’t get my HFN/HEA), mystery, space opera, and military sci-fi. I didn’t love it, so I’m not going to name it, but it did get us to MO and back. …

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Kiss Cookie Season

/ Life

Just before Christmas, a few of my friends and I get together for a cookie exchange and happy hour. We may not always be the best about getting together the rest of the year, but we always do Christmas cookies.

Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies I went through a few cookies before I landed on peanut butter kiss cookies as “my” cookie. I make them exactly once a year, but I’ve been doing it for so long now that I have the technique down. It still takes a while to roll them all and top them with kisses, but the results are worth it.

I usually augment with a second kind of cookie or candy. In the past I’ve made peppermint bark and Christmas crack (aka saltine toffee), and other, lesser stuff that I can’t remember. :)

This year I decided on millionaire’s shortbread, which I’d never made before. …

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