Hello everyone!

So this past weekend I attended my first writing workshop and I have to say, it was a lot of fun! I learned a lot, had a few nice chats with some lovely writers, got the first ten pages of Reboot critiqued (it’s a thumbs up!) and had an all around good time!

As some of you know, I have more than a few WIPs and many of them I need to Indie publish due to having burned my first publication rights years ago. However I have been very strongly considering seeing if I can’t get some of my newer fiction, such as Reboot, published traditionally.

I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of both Indie and Trad publishing and just finding myself in kind of a ‘should I, shouldn’t I?’ back and forth that has gone on an embarrassing amount of time.

However after attending the workshop I find myself leaning very strongly one direction over the other, and I have finally come to a decision.

I’m going to make a serious go at Indie publishing my works. All of them. Including Reboot.

That’s not to say in the future on some wacky unreal day if my stuff is doing well enough and I get approached by an agent I won’t consider transferring some works into trad publishing (hey, it worked for Andy Weir, right?) but for now, this is my path.

So now all my professional research time is going to go into that, making sure I have the whyfors and the wheretos in place.

Along those lines my writing schedule hadn’t changed so far as my new projects list, however the *publishing* schedule is going to alter a bit. For Vhantalya, I want to wait until I have a few of the sequels done before I release it, that way I can put them out at a decent pace and people won’t have to wait forever for the sequels to be done. So though Vhan is a gnat’s wing away from being ready to go up and in print, as soon as I finish this last polish it’s going into my Dark Vault (I just now decided to make this a thing LOL) until its younger siblings catch up. So, bad news, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for that but good news! Once its here you won’t have to wait an eternity for the sequels!

Which is a natural seqway into my next note: the second book in the Immortal Elements series, the Tree Y’Edenel, I have been chipping away at and working diligently on the book cover. I had a not-insignificant portion of the first draft done before I realized it was going to end up an unwieldy monster and not the best written as I was trying to pigeonhole myself into an outline. As a consummate pantser (no offense to plotters!) my creative mojo just doesn’t work that way, and I end up grinding to a halt and struggling to put words on the page *just* to put words on the page. This doesn’t make for a happy writer, a happy book, or happy readers in the end.

About eighty thousand words in I did the computer equivalent of dramatically tearing off a notebook sheet, balling it up, and throwing it into my ‘save but don’t use’ folder, and started again. I am now 25,000 words in and things are not entirely smooth yet but definitely going far more smoothly than before.

“But Mel!” you might say, eyeballing the date. “You said you’d have it ready for betas by now!”

Why yes. Yes I did. Apologies for that, clearly that won’t happen. The best I can say at this moment is that it will get to betas sometime this year. As promised, I am starting my official first draft of So My Grandma Summoned a Demon today, and I will be writing both. I expect SMGSAD will be on time for beta reads but the goal of my schedule is not necessarily to write, polish, and put out a finished work in that time frame (that would be insane, and anyone actually writing a book from scratch and putting it out so quickly likely is not putting out well-written or professional level content) but to get three of my books written (first draft, start to end) done each year. And I’m still confident all three of 2023’s projects will accomplish that by the time 2024 rings the bell.

And though I am not yet ready to commit to a release date, it’s looking pretty good that Reboot will at least be have a release date, if not be released, by the time that happens as well. So far the reception has been excellent, beta edits are underway, and I am tweaking the cover now that I am 100% sure it *will* be the cover since I am going the Indie route now. So watch for more news on that!

Let’s see, what else. Ah!

On the reading front! I found an awesome series called ‘Liches Get Stitches’ by H.J. Tolson that I am having just a lot of fun reading. I’m on the third book of four, ‘Lich, Please’, and for any humor fantasy lovers out there I highly suggest it. It’s light, it’s fun, it’ll give you a few giggles, it won’t weigh you down, and I identify with the main character, Maud, on a *visceral* level, especially in book 1.

I am also reading Deathborne (Dragon Seer #1) by S. Kay Lanphear. Lanphear is an Indie author and this is their debut. If you like fantasy that isn’t slapped in just a rehash of medieval England, and a book you can sink your teeth into, this might be your poison. This was just released so there isn’t a ton yet in the way of reviews, and I’m currently only 20% of the way through it, but so far I am quite enjoying the setting, characters, and the world that Lanphear has built for us. Check it out, and support Indie authors!

I think that’s it for now! If you have any thoughts or comments or Indie books you really enjoyed and want to support the author, please let me know!