May, May, May… What can I say about May? More than I probably should, so I’m keeping it to being busy.
The first part of the month was all about our family vacation to Florida. The highlights? For me, it was Kennedy Space Center, because hell yeah I’m that much of a nerd. Mr. Nevermore’s fav event was more difficult to pin down, but he’s usually into things where he can show the ravens something new and ridiculous, so I’m leaning towards the tandem 4-wheeler vs. ditch calamity.
Oh yeah, Florida delivered on the bizarre.
My youngest got to meet her idol, Darth Vader, and gazed up at him with an adoration kids usually reserve for Santa Claus. Yes, we have pictures, and yes, they will come back to haunt her. It definitely deepened my suspicions she’ll have questionable taste in men.
Meanwhile, my middle raven somehow managed to smuggle down stink bombs in his luggage. He had a blast gleefully smashing them in hotel elevators and anywhere else he could get away with it. And let me tell you, I was frisking the kid for the damned things and he was still inventive enough to get them past me. I mean, kudos for drive and originality, but I worry about his career path.
Mr. Nevermore thought it was hilarious, and I’ve a stinking suspicion my son was not the only one responsible for the hijinks.
Yeah, I sighed a lot, taking comfort in the fact that at least my eldest raven wasn’t a deviant. That lasted right up until we get snagged by TSA trying to make our return flight. Turns out squirreling away water bottles full of sand in your carry-on is a big no-no. Who knew?
But hey, we got to see the ins-and-outs of an “incendiary detection test” being performed, and my middle raven probably benefitted from being detained… or picked up pointers on how not to get caught. Whatever. It’s all about those teaching moments, right?
Right. Let’s just say I was happy to see my cat. He, on the other hand, was not particularly happy to see me and proceeded to be an utter prick for the next week and a half, expressing his displeasure with tactically placed vomit.
You know, as cats do.
So yeah, that was fun, and the other thing about May? I still have the galley edits for Flame & Shadow to finish. Not gonna lie, that’s been a miserable process. Reading your own work twenty-billion times sucks. It’s true when they say the editing is never done and that final act of releasing your work into the wild is fraught with angst.
Which is probably why I’m still obsessing over it. So I’m using this opportunity to lay down the law and say it’s gonna be a done deal by July. Like, out of my hands and in production with a release date.
Disregard the universe laughing at me in the background.
After which, what’s on the to-do list? Whelp, Breaker‘s getting a new synopsis focusing on the dark romance aspect as opposed to the epic quest. And yes, that’s a miserable task too. As in, my version of hell is taking a 130K manuscript and distilling it into a 500 word summary.
It’s times like this I reminisce on the good old days when I thought authors “just” wrote books… oh yeah, cue that laughing thing again. And you want to know my thoughts about that whole misconception, how to become one of my ARC readers, or first dibs on my latest freebee, you’ll have to sign up for my newsletter. Form’s to the right of this post — check it out!
