Happy July. Happy Mid-Summer. Happy hot, hot days. June was an incredible month. My time was very consumed by the re-launch of The Sacrifice of One, but I still had time for some personal adventures too.
Since it’s summer, a lot of people are tending to their gardens. I’ve had mixed results with living plants through the years. I’ve kept a few of them alive, but many have had tragic ends. When I received a tomato plant from my Dad about a month ago, I was determined to keep that thing alive. So far I’ve succeeded, and I even have a small, green tomato that has blossomed! Comment below with what you have in your garden! I’m expecting a lot of tomatoes from this plant pretty soon.
I haven’t just been watering my tomato plant all month. I also took a weekend trip to Washington DC with my husband and sister to visit some friends of ours. With the world still being in the middle of the pandemic and most things being shut down, we were pretty limited on what we could do, but we were able to visit Fort Washington Park.
We saw some awesome panoramic views along with the outside of the fort (they didn’t have the inside open for visitors). Fort Washington Park sits along the Potomac River, and you can actually see the city of DC from certain parts of the park.
It was a great time to get away, but as I alluded above, my month was really consumed with the re-launch of The Sacrifice of One. Most, if not all of my blog posts centered around it, and I had to put some of my work on The Dark Ruler on hold in order to pull it off.
I’ve spoken a lot of the re-launch, so I won’t rehash everything, but I’ll give some highlights. I did a lot of things during this re-launch that I’d never done before. It’s called stretching yourself, right?
- I wrote a really fun quiz that you can take and it’ll tell you which character from The Sacrifice of One you are.
- I wrote a character profile about my main character, Camilla Crim. I’m really excited to be doing more of this in the next couple of launching so you can get to know more of my characters!
- I also posted a map of Bear Gap which is Camilla’s home territory. I actually drew this map several years ago when I first wrote The Sacrifice of One, but I never posted it!
- And then on launch day, I hosted a virtual launch party on Facebook live where I read an excerpt aloud, had a very LIVELY Q and A session, and gave away a signed, paperback copy of The Sacrifice of One!
All of these pre-launch activities were new and interesting and confusing, and I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I figured it out as I went! This has been a very growing month for me as an author.
Sometimes it’s hard to pull myself away from the writing because I enjoy that process so much, but I’m learning that these other activities that connect me with you (the reader) can be important too!
Speaking of writing… I didn’t totally abandon my work on The Dark Ruler. I still wrote over 20,000 words toward that manuscript, HOWEVER, despite my progress, I have been struggling with the miry middle of this book.
This happens to me every time. I blow through the first half of a book, but by the time I hit the end of Act 2, I start to struggle. I do have some deadlines to meet this month (July) before I send my book off to the editor, so I’ll be putting my head down and focusing on The Dark Ruler a lot.
Looking forward, I will also be re-launching book #2 in the Camilla Crim series, The Bear Gap Rebels, on August 1st! Now that I’ve done one launch, I’ll feel like an old pro for this launch. (haha not exactly…) But I do have a litany of posts planned for this launch.
Make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter so you don’t miss any of the launch updates or the release of The Dark Ruler. I’m also still recruiting members to my Street Team aka launch team. If you want to apply and learn more about that, you can do that HERE.
Be sure to let me know in the comments below what’s growing in your garden right now!
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