Hi All,

Big and exciting news first!

A Slice Of Mystery has been doing so well at Barnes & Noble that it was selected as a "Top Indie Favorite"! It's not something I could apply for, or pay for, it's solely at the B&N team's discretion, so I'm seriously over the moon, and to celebrate, here's an exclusive 50% off discount code for Nook readers (B&N), valid for both A Slice Of Mystery and Your Knowledge Or Your Life?

Enter BNPSLICE50 at check-out - valid only from April 23rd to May 11th, hurry!

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Now, this newsletter is on the long side, so you might want to grab your favourite drink and/or go to the loo before you start reading!

Book news:

So much to tell you, where do I start?

Let's go with the books in order!

​A Slice Of Mystery is the first in the Abigail Palmer Cozy Mystery series: it came out just under three weeks ago, and I'm bowled over by the response... so many more people than I'd expected bought it! If you did, THANK YOU! and I hope you're enjoying it. When you've had a chance to read it, could I ask, pretty please, that you leave a review wherever you bought or borrowed it from? Even just one word can help other readers find it, and/or decide whether they want to try it!

Book 1.5 (working title is A Secret Santa Mystery, but this might change) is a short story (at least I'm planning on it being short... who knows, it may end up being a novella, or even a full size novel!) that I'd been meaning to start writing for ages, and this month, I finally started. It's a Christmas story (as you may have guessed from the title), and I have to admit that it's not easy to write it in April (I wish I'd written that one last November!), so I did something that feels logical to me: put on Christmas music and listen to it while I write - if you have any instrumental Holiday music you can recommend, pleeeease send them to me! Or any that isn't in English, French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese.

And since I want to write faster, and do chores around the house, and get some exercise, I've been experimenting with a combination of typing and dictating. I'm new to dictation, so there's a learning curve, but it's something I can see myself doing more of... I'll report next month on whether it's working for me... or not!

Now onto Two Sparks Of Mystery, book 2 in the series... I drafted this one last November, and let it "ferment" for a while, because I knew the subplot wasn't quite right, but I didn't know how to make it better. At the beginning of this month, I finally had an idea that I thought would work, and could also help with some "tone" issues I had (I thought the book overall was too dark). I didn't get a chance to start revisions (see Life News below), and while I was annoyed, it turned out to be very lucky: one late afternoon as I was working on a new jigsaw puzzle after a week of not having much time to think about writing or publishing, something dawned on me, and I swore out loud... very loud actually!

I'm going to be cryptic (sorry!), because I don't want to risk spoiling anything (I'll tell you if you ask after you've read the book!), but basically, I had set up a key character to do something, and the whole plot hinges on them, and then I realised: that character had absolutely no reason to do that thing, at all. And I couldn't take the thing out, because if I did, the whole story would collapse...

I have a couple of ideas on how to fix it, but it will need a lot more re-writing than I'd anticipated (hence why I turned my attentions to the Secret Santa story... productive procrastination!)

Last but not least, an exciting piece of news (to me!), is that my number of followers on Bookbub has quadrupled this month... if you look at the actual numbers, I will completely understand if you're underwhelmed (really), but to me, going from three followers to twelve, in three weeks, is very exciting! And if you want to follow me there, here's the link!

Free Stuff:

If you're looking for free mysteries & thrillers, check out this Bookfunnel event, or this one for small town cozies!

In the mood for sci-fi & fantasy? Then this Bookfunnel event might be more your speed!

Fantasy and Paranormal Romance readers? Then this Bookfunnel event is for you!

Tackling the (out of control) TBR pile:

I treated myself this month, and re-read the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. They're my comfort books! The anthropological aspect, the sociology aspect, the cultural aspect, and the historical aspect (in book 3), all wrapped in lovely prose... what can I say?

I also read my very first Agatha Raisin by M.C. Beaton this month, and I can't believe I left it to to gather dust on my TBR pile for 10+ years! I thoroughly enjoyed it, it's really a proper cozy mystery - and it gave me quiche cravings (even though it's the murder weapon - and I'm not spoiling anything, it's literally in the title: Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death!)

That being said, and regardless of the state of my TBR pile... can I have some recommendations for cozy mysteries please? Bonus point if they are by indie authors!

Life news:

I've been casually looking for a new day job since September last year, and this month, four different ones came up (it's like the bus: you wait for one for ages, then they all show up at the same time!)

Three of them fizzled out quite quickly, but the last one seemed quite promising, a slightly more senior version of what I've been doing for years, so I did the calls with the recruiter, I spend time reading the documentation, I researched (a lot), then did a long interview, and more calls with the recruiter, and all of that for nothing because I wasn't the right fit for the role and the role wasn't the right fit for me (regardless of how it had looked on paper).

To be honest, mid-way through the interview, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get that role, but I'd also thought the same thing during other interviews in the past, and I did get those jobs. So, when the recruiter asked me whether I'd take the role if they offered, I said "yes"... and immediately regretted it. Not because I thought I couldn't do the role, although I knew I'd need to do some serious studying on the side to level up, but because I had a feeling I'd be miserable in the job.

Is it weird that when the recruiter told me the next day it was a "no", I was relieved? Probably, but I don't care... I didn't get the job that would have made me miserable and bored out of my mind, let's celebrate!!!

Unrelated to the above, but something that made me pause, think, and self-reflect:

A friend congratulated me on finishing my giant jigsaw puzzle, and praised me on "effort", and it got me thinking.

It wasn't effort that led me to completion, it was perseverance, tenacity, and maybe even a degree of stubbornness, but "effort"? No, it wasn't effort. And it's the same with writing.

I have no intension on ever giving up on writing and publishing, even though it's hard, and it can feel like I'm not progressing fast enough (which is why I take every opportunity to celebrate the smallest achievements, see Bookbub news above!), but I'm probably just too stubborn to give up! Also because I do want my stories out in the world, because maybe one person will relate, and it will help them feel seen, something that I've wanted all my life. Not approval, but a sense of "belonging".

Sure, sometimes it's hard, and I can feel blocked, or it can take hours to write a semi-decent sentence, but I'm learning that, when that happens, it means I need a break. The traditional advice of "write every day" doesn't really seem to work for my AuDHD brain.

What does seem to work is: binge-write for a month until I'm too exhausted to make a cup of instant coffee, crash, recover for X amount of weeks, then start all over again. Healthy? I'm guessing not, but that's how I seem to function!

Love, Sophie

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PS: In case you were wondering, it took me 10 months to complete the 6,000pcs jigsaw puzzle!

  

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