What's new?
Hi All!
Hope you're having a good day / week / month? I'm not one for chit-chat, so let's dive in!
Book news:
I should rename this section, "Things Didn't Go As Planned"!
I had to restart the cover design process with another designer (proof that just because someone comes highly recommended doesn't mean they'll be good for you), which means I probably won't have a cover for my cozy mystery until the beginning of November, at the earliest.
This is very disappointing as I'm having to delay publicity and marketing activities, but as I always say, "everything happens for a reason, even if sometimes it takes a reeaally long time to figure out what the reason was."!
In better news, two of my Beta readers have sent me their feedback, and it doesn't seem too bad. I do need to rewrite the ending, but I have a couple of ideas on how to improve on it so it may not be that big of a hurdle.
Another thing I did was start plotting the next three books in the Abigail Palmer series, which meant writing multiple versions of the project plan for the biscuit factory project! I know which phases of the IT project I want to cover, but I need to know roughly when in the year they will be, so I can develop the setting correctly (end-of-year holidays vs swelteringly hot summer?) Next steps will be refining the plot details of each book, with a goal of writing the first draft for all three over October and November (NaNoWriMo may be defunct, but the habit of drafting new books in November is here to stay!)
Tackling the (out of control) TBR pile:
I finally read the last of Austin Kleon's books, Steal Like An Artist, and like the others, it went on my writing bookshelf!
Other reads included:
Silverborn, the fourth instalment of the Morrigan Crow / Nevermoor series, by Jessica Townsend - This one was a long time in the making, as the third in the series came out five years ago, and it was good, but I missed some of the magic in the previous ones. I'll still read the next one, whenever it comes out, just hoping some of that magic will be back.
The Maid, by Nita Prose - I read this one because it came up when I searched for "cozy mysteries with neurodivergent characters" as part of the marketing prep work for A Slice of Mystery. It was fine, but I was surprised at the hype around it, I didn't think it was that good (and I didn't like the ending, there had been no indication that the narrator was unreliable until that point, and I felt cheated). I won't be reading the next two in the series.
The Phoenix Project, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford - another one I read as part of my marketing prep work for A Slice of Mystery, and I devoured it! Officially, it's a novel set on an IT project (which is why I thought it could be a comparison tool to be used in advertising - "if you liked The Phoenix Project, you might like A Slice of Mystery"), but some of the reviews made it sound like it should have been labelled as a non-fiction business book. I think both sides are correct - it's a novel, it's as engaging as a novel, but with high-quality information that could be found in a business book. I'm already planning on reading the sequel, The Unicorn Project.
Life news:
My cleaning week happened!!! Yes, I'm unduly excited about it, but it was so needed, it's nice to see the difference. I could use another week to clean all the things I didn't, but for right now, it's good enough.
"Good enough" is something I'm actively practicing because it's so uncomfortable. Perfection is what I truly want, but it feels too hard to achieve, therefore nothing gets done. On the other hand, "good enough" is perfectly achievable!
I didn't quite get the "week of doing nothing" I really wanted / needed, but I did get some rest, which definitely helped. Realistically, the next available slot for a "week of doing nothing" might be in December, but it's something to look forward to.
I want to be better at finding balance, but the more I try, the more I'm thinking my brain may not be wired this way. It feels like I can only function at either 0 or 100, when most people operate at 50% capacity quite happily. If that's true, then the answer may be to shrink the periods of time where I operate at 100, so the exhaustion/recovery rate cycle is smaller. If I start a recovery phase less exhausted (because I operated at 100% capacity for less time), in theory, it should take less time to recover?!
I'm a work in progress, and that's ok!
Love, Sophie
PS: I almost forgot, my giant jigsaw puzzle is progressing!