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Updates and Other News

Hello, friends, it’s been a while! Can someone please explain how it’s already November? I seem to have blinked and missed all of October. Aurora Blazing has been out for over a month and it both seems like no time at all and an eternity since the release.

A couple weekends ago I handed north to Dallas for the Buns & Roses Romance Tea for Literacy and had a lovely time meeting all of the readers at my table and everyone who came to the signing afterwards. Thank you all so much!

This amazing quilt was one of the things they raffled off for charity. I felt so bad signing it because my signature looks like a five-year-old drew it. I blame Mr. Mihalik, because I had a nice easy to write last name before we were married. Now it’s all a heap of loops that turns into a mountain range. Err… at least it’s unique? 😅

Alisha Rai gave the Buns & Roses keynote, and it was one of the best speeches I’ve seen. If you get a chance to see her speak—GO! Overall, the event raised over $26,000 for the Richardson Adult Literacy Center, which is incredible. Thank you to everyone who made it possible!

In new house news, the floors are in, and we’re in the middle of cleaning and packing our old house. It’s been an ordeal and there is still an overwhelming amount of work left to do, but I can see the end. Maybe, in the far distance. :)

The new floors looks great, though. Here is a picture of my future office. I can’t wait to be moved!

In work news, I’m behind on everything. I haven’t written anything in ages and I’m not even sure I remember how to write. I still need to pitch a new series, do edits for CR, and write Rogue Queen 3. I’m hoping to start posting the serial version of that last one by the end of the year, but it’s going to be closer to Christmas than Thanksgiving. Like a lot closer. In fact, expect Santa to deliver it. 😂

I have seen the cover for Chaos Reigning and it’s fabulous! I can’t wait until I can share it! I’m also getting close to nailing down the cover for RQ3, so that should be good to go once I figure out what the actual story is going to be. :)

I hope you all are doing well and enjoying the fall weather. And if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, good luck! I’m cheering for you!

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First Night in Our New House and Other News

Last night we stayed in our new house, even though we’re not even close to moved yet. We busted out our camping air mattress and folding camp chairs and had a sleepover. The old owners left us a TV, and we got the internet connected, so after we finished working, we kicked back and watched some game streaming while drinking wine. It was awesome. :)

The new backyard is so nice! This is our view from the kitchen:

A view of cedar trees and no houses because we back to a green space.

For reference, right now I’m sitting on the couch at our old house and I can see four houses out the back window, so the view above is a big improvement. :)

We got all of the locks changed, which always takes far longer than we expect. Next, we have to decide on flooring, which we’ve narrowed down to a couple of shades of hardwood. Picking an entire floor from a small sample is always difficult, because it’s hard to imagine what the whole area is going to look like once it’s done. Fingers crossed we choose wisely!

In bookish news, last Friday, Bree and Donna (the two halves of Kit Rocha), invited me to join them on their Twitch stream to talk about books and space princesses and romance. If you missed the live stream, you can still watch the video in the archive. I had such a nice time and I am absolutely delighted they had me on! Plus, we’re officially BFFs now, and I have video proof, so there’s that. ;) Follow their channel for more bookish chats, including last month’s chat with Alyssa Cole.

And finally, we’re just a couple days away from the release of Aurora Blazing! If you missed it, I posted the third chapter on Friday, so head over to the book page to get a preview. And now is your last chance to get your preorders and library requests in! Thank you so much to everyone who has already ordered or requested, you all are amazing and I appreciate it so, so much! ❤️

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We’re Buying a House!

Things have been a bit quiet around here because last week, rather than taking the vacation we were sort of planning, we put an offer on a new house. We’ve been looking for a long time, but the neighborhoods we’ve been eyeing have relatively low turnover, so when something comes up, you have to jump on it.

We jumped.

And we succeeded! But that means paperwork and inspections and appraisals and packing and cleaning and …

You get the point.

And because I didn’t feel like we had quite enough going on this month and next, our closing is the week Aurora Blazing comes out. 😂😭

Needless to say, I’m going to try to get some of my promo stuff done and scheduled before October 1. We’ll see how successful I’m going to be, because right now I look around at everything that needs to be done, both personally and professionally, and just want to hide in a corner with a book.

Maybe a whole stack of books. And some tea. And a blankie. :)

As always, if you want to keep up with me, Twitter is where I’m most active. Just be prepared for lots of whining this month as I try to stay on top of everything. :)

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On Deadline

I’m back from RWA 2019, which was awesome, but now I’m just two weeks out from book three’s deadline, so I’m going into internet hibernation to focus on words. I’ll do an RWA recap when I come back, because it really was incredible, but book words come first.

If you email/message me in the next two weeks, I probably won’t respond until after I’m done with book three. I have a lot of words to make and very little time left to make them. If it’s extremely urgent and you don’t have my phone number, Twitter DM me. But if you abuse this power, I will block you with extreme prejudice. :)

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Deadlines and Promo, a Ramble

First of all, Polaris Rising is on sale for $1.99 at the various US ebook retailers for the next two weeks (I don’t know about international—sorry!). If you’ve been meaning to pick up a copy, now is your chance to get it on sale! :)

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

As for deadlines, some of you may remember that book three was due on July 1, and today is July 1. So book three should be finished.

Except it’s not.

At the beginning of June, it looked like I wasn’t going to make it, for a host of reasons that are all excuses and don’t alleviate the fact that I was very likely going to miss my deadline. I hate missing deadlines. Hate. But sometimes, life gives you what it gives you.

So my agent reached out to my editor and asked for an extension. Thanks to a bit of wiggle room in the schedule (and thanks to my editor being a saint), the date is now early August and I didn’t have to try to kill myself to hit July 1. I actually played a game, and took a weekend off, and slept.

I still have a lot of work to do, so it’s going to remain pretty quiet around here for another month or so. As always, I’m most active on Twitter.

Oh, and don’t forget, The Queen’s Advantage releases next week! You still have time to get your preorder in. :)

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play

While I’m here, I might as well tell you about the good news/bad news for the print copy of TQA. The bad news is that thanks to the extra length (the final draft is ~52k, compared to ~39k for TQG), the price jumped to $10.99, which is not ideal, I know. Before I get angry emails: the ebook remains $2.99 despite the extra length.

Why is the print cost so high?

I asked my agent the same thing. There are a couple things at work here. Print on demand books are more expensive, full stop. And to put the book into Amazon’s expanded distribution (which lets libraries and other bookstore customers order it), there is a middle-man that must be paid.

At $10.99, I make about $1 when someone buys an expanded distribution copy, but about $3 when someone buys from Amazon directly, and those prices can’t be set separately (I asked). That’s compared to about $2 for the ebook. So if we set the print price any lower, then I make pennies when someone outside of Amazon buys it. :(

Now for the small piece of good news: print books don’t have a preorder option. They are either up or not, and since my agent is out of the office this week, she wanted to get it up before she left.

So if you want a print book, you can order one right now and Amazon will rush it to your door. If you prefer to buy from BN or another bookstore, it will be up whenever it trickles through the system, hopefully by release. (ISBN: 1075962099) Fingers crossed!

Now back to making words. I hope you all are doing well!