​Your Knowledge Or Your Life? made it to the next round in the BBNYA 2026 awards! Can you tell I'm excited? I am, I really am!!!

In other exciting news, the Secret Santa revisions have started! I write very messy first drafts, so it takes a while to do the first read-through to identify ALL the issues - check out this Instagram video for an idea of what that looks like (also available as static images here). It is a fun process (past me from 5 years ago would have a fit if she read those words. Editing? Fun? What???), but I also can't wait to be done (I'm a walking contradiction!).
​I really do need your help to find a good title though... It's a novella, and Abigail wants to identify her Secret Santa, because the present she received is... puzzling. She also wants to discover who pulled a prank on the IT project's big boss, Jeff. Millie is of course present in this novella, as are Frank the cheesemonger, best friend Hannah, and kitty cat Jasper. I also introduce a few characters who will feature in the next book, Two Sparks Of Mystery, in a big way (one of them will die, but I'm not saying any more!) - please hit reply and send me your title ideas, you will definitely be in the acknowledgements (and I'll name a character after you in a future novel)!

The 0.99 sale for Your Knowledge Or Your Life? went well, but it made me realise that 99% of sales for this specific ebook come from Amazon. This led to a decision that had been months in the making: I will be removing the ebook from all other platforms and make it available exclusively through Amazon. Why? Because this will allow me to enroll it in Kindle Unlimited, which might bring in more readers, and more reviews (yes, I know I keep on harping on about reviews... it's because they matter - a lot of promotional opportunities are unavailable unless the book has a certain number of reviews). The process of delisting the ebook on the other platforms will take a while, but if you were considering purchasing the ebook from a retailer other than Amazon, please do so as soon as possible to avoid missing out. Your Knowledge Or Your Life? will remain available through libraries (Hoopla, Libby, BorrowBox etc), and the paperback will remain available everywhere.

In other fun news, I've been formatting the Large Print edition of A Slice Of Mystery this past week, and I found... three typos (well, one typo, and 2 formatting issues). I mean, seriously??? I know my Beta readers and I are only humans, but I can't believe I'm still finding typos! I'm correcting them as I find them in the ebook and paperback master files, then, once I'm done with the Large Print (hopefully in the next few days), I'll upload the revised files to the various platforms. I'm hoping the Large Print will be available for purchase by mid-August, but it will depend on my cover designer (he promised it wouldn't take long, but he's also very busy).

Before I forget, I'm looking at translating my YA parallel-world mystery and my cozy mystery (my YA paranormal romance really needs to be re-edited before I can have it translated), so if you are native readers in Spanish, French, or German, and interested in being Beta readers for these languages, please let me know!

Attention USA readers, A Slice Of Mystery is on sale for $3.99 from August 1st through to August 16th on all platforms. This one is courtesy of Barnes & Noble, who are featuring the novel in their "Big Deal on Short Books" event!

Now, onto the free books:

For the cozy mystery lovers, check out this event.

Science-Fiction and Fantasy? This way please. Also, do check out this one, there are a few lighter sci-fi ones I have my eye on!

And for the Kobo Plus readers out there, check out this highlight page, you may find your next read.

To prepare for the Large Print edition, I went to the library, just to have a quick look through the large print books, to check how various publishers handled it (since I found contradictory information online). I told myself it would only take a few minutes: get in, take pictures for reference, get out. Well... as any bookworm knows, that was wishful thinking. I walked out of there with five new books. Can we replace the expression "a kid in a candy shop" with "a bookworm in a library"?

Something interesting came out of this though. I usually take forever to get to books on my TBR pile (even with my auto-buy authors), but with these library books, it was different: first of all, one was a "quick return", so I only had two weeks to read it (4 for the others). That lit a fire under me, and not only have I already read it (it was okay, but really could have been shorter), but I read two from my own TBR pile, and I'm almost done with another from the library.

I don't want to jinx it, but I might just be out of this reading slump?!

A few really exciting things happened this month.

First: I ate my one apricot from my own tree - to have only one after so many flowers in the spring was disappointing, but the apricot itself was perfect, it was like biting in sunshine!

Second: I took a week off. Well, most of one, but it was the most time off I've had in over 18 months (unless you count recovering from surgery in December - I don't), and it did me the world of good. I loved it so much, I want to do it again, soon! It acted like a reset, allowed me to gain clarity on what was important, and what was just noise, and it also reminded me of all the things I used to love doing and simply haven't had made time for in years. So I want to do better. I'm trying my best, but I also know myself. Once I'm in "hyper-focus" mode, everything fades away, except the task I'm working on.

Still. I've been doing little things in the garden a few times a week, I'm reading most days, I'm doing a tiny bit more language studying, and I have (finally) started a small embroidery project. Nothing fancy, a tea towel I got years ago. It has "Oh my gourd, it's fall!" printed on it, but after years of washing, it's been looking very faded. Since it makes me smile every time I see it, I decided to embroider the message, and (if you don't look too closely), I'm doing a good job!

What about you? What are you making room for in your daily/weekly/monthly schedules?

PS: my apricot and the embroidery project.

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