Category Archives: Mommy life

Publishing timeline, KU, and other updates

Things have been hectic for me lately. Both of my sons have had some rare/unusual health problems, and my oldest spent several days in the hospital a couple of weeks ago. It was a similar issue to what happened to him last September when a virus triggered rhabdomyolysis (mentioned in this post), but it hit him even harder this time even though it was only a cold. I detailed what has been going on to my Facebook fan group if you’re interested in finding out more. We have begun to recover from that (the adults in the family got sick right after the boys began getting better and it was brutal on us too), but at least I can start catching up on author-related matters again.

The health issues did set me back a few weeks on my writing/book release schedule. I’d hoped to have Cast by Flames out by the end of July, but it’s now looking like mid-October (updated). Sorry for the delay, but I’ll be working hard to get it done and out to you all. After that, I’ll begin work on the Galadon novel with the hope of releasing it early 2024.

Kindle Unlimited News

I originally planned to pull the Dragon’s Breath Series from Kindle Unlimited early next month when the current 90-day term expires. Having said that, in recent weeks the ebooks have been getting borrowed and read at an increased rate that makes me hesitate to pull them. I’d hate to catch people in the middle of the series and cause them to be unable to borrow the rest, so I may leave the ebooks in the program for the rest of the year. The series would have gone back to KU around the time Cast by Flames released anyway.

Also, I am considering putting the Sensor Series in Kindle Unlimited for the very first time. Sales have slowed down for those books on the other retailers, so it would be a good chance to let readers try it in KU. This is also in anticipation of my returning to that universe next year (after I’m done with the Dragon’s Breath books, of course) when I begin work on a fresh spin-off series with Kerbasi and an all-new heroine.

For those of you who haven’t tried the Sensor Series and have no idea who Kerbasi is, let’s just say he’s the super powerful antihero who you fantasize about murdering in terrible ways only to find him growing on you later down the line. I continue to have readers email me about him getting his own books, and I’ve been brainstorming how to make them work best for a while now. I’ll post more on that early next week. For now, I’ll probably start moving the Sensor novels and novellas over to KU in late May or early June. I’ll let you all know for sure soon.

Really excited about the ideas percolating in my head and all the writing to come. Feel free to let me know your thoughts!

KU & Audio News for Torn in Flames (and other stuff)

Just a couple of quick book updates for you all, followed by tales of my naughty toddler.

First, I pulled Torn in Flames off of all the retailers except Amazon last night. When I checked this morning, it appeared to have cleared from everywhere, so I could go ahead and enroll it in Kindle Unlimited. Yay, I got it done earlier than expected! I didn’t visit every single Amazon country site, but it is definitely in KU for the United States and United Kingdom. My guess is it should be good everywhere else as well. If you’ve been waiting to borrow it, you should have no problem now.

For those waiting on audio, I checked my publisher’s website and found they had listed the expected release date for Torn in Flames as May 23rd, 2023. That has always been accurate in the past, so it should be reliable this time. I know it’s not as soon as you’d probably like, but it’s a quicker turn around than the last book in the Dragon’s Breath Series. As soon as the edits were finished with this book, I sent the manuscript to them right away. They received it ten days before the ebook released.

Still, it takes time to schedule the narrator, for her to do the recording, then handle edits and sound engineering. Plus, they have to do their version of the cover during that time. I’ll let you all know when the pre-order is available.

On a personal note, my youngest son (22 months old) is becoming quite the handful as those in my Facebook Fan group are aware since I relay stories to them occasionally. Last week, I was setting up my coffee maker. While I walked away to dump the coffee grounds in the trash can (located behind a locked gate in the laundry room to keep him from pillaging it), Dean managed to grab the pot and smashed it into the counter. Glass everywhere. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but it certainly wasn’t fun to clean up.

Of course, buying a new pot is nearly the same cost as a whole coffee maker. Mine had stopped letting me program it to brew in the morning, so I chose to get a new one. It arrived a few days later since Amazon’s shipping times seem to be slower these days. We also have a Keurig my husband loves to use, so I made do with that, but I prefer my coffee maker to those pods. The taste just isn’t the same no matter what brand I try.

Two days after breaking my coffee pot, Dean got a hold of his big brother’s glasses. I searched for over an hour for them and couldn’t find them anywhere. Checked again the next morning and then had no choice except to send Adam to school without them. He has an older pair with the same prescription, but they’re chewed up and scratched. Since one of his eyes has almost perfect vision, he can get by without them. It’s the other one that is nearly blind that made me frustrated that I couldn’t find them.

Thirty minutes after I dropped him off at school, I had an epiphany and decided to check the trash can (locked behind a child gate but visible from the hallway). My future baseball or basketball star had thrown his big brother’s glasses into the bin and they were buried at the bottom . I scrubbed them and my hands with anti-bacterial soap very thoroughly and then rushed them to my son at school.

No idea where my younger son got his excellent throwing arm, especially since he’s not even two years old yet. Back when I was in the U.S. Army, I hated when they made me go to the range to throw live grenades. I can aim for short distances, five feet is good, but grenades must be tossed much farther than that. All I had to do was get them over a tall reinforced wall to be safe, but every time I was terrified I’d drop it or not make it over the top. Since I survived these training exercises, you can assume I did get the grenades over the side, but they always sounded like they exploded rather close. Pretty sure it didn’t make it very far past the wall.

Thank God I never had to throw one in combat. As much as I hate to admit it, I throw like a girl in the most cliche sense. My oldest son appears to have inherited that same bad gene from me, but not the youngest one. He’s surprisingly good at a lot of things that can get him into trouble. Hopefully, I survive this toddler period with my sanity intact and most of my stuff!