June 2024 Author Updates

It’s time for a recap of June. Reading and writing updates, Instagram interviews, and poetry updates.

This month I was:

Reading: Fugitive Telemetry on audio | They Hate Each Other in physical | The Dreaming Crystal ebook
Drinking: Summer Skies from Starbucks
Watching: N/A
Playing: Dragon Age Inquisition

Writing Updates and Book Progress

I received 2nd place in the 2024 Poe-it-like-Poe poetry contest for my poem The Moth ! I modeled the meter and rhyming pattern for this poem off of The Raven, which is one of my all-time favorite poems. Read it and the other winning poems at the aforementioned links!

I am working on maps for my fantasy romance book Tavern Tale (which will also be a series tentatively titled Tales of Trelvania). I don’t *really* know how to draw a map but I’ve found some great resources including tutorials from Map Effects. I’m doing these to send to my publisher Space Wizard. Below. This is a zoom in on the province of Trelvania. I’ll have a zoom out of the world map to do as well and see what we end up with for the final book!

I finished a short story which will become another for my planned fairytale/myths retellings collection, Legend Has It. It’s as if Hansel and Gretel crash landed on a planet and I had a lot of fun writing it, although the ending evaded me for a while. I have two more stories I want to write and then I think I have enough for the collection. Maybe a 2025 release?

And of course, I’m still working on book 2 of the Etherea Cycle with my good friend and coauthor – we’ve passed the half-way mark on the word count we think this book will be. And we are announcing something special about a character on August 5th, so make sure to sign up for update at my coauthor blog! We’re also working on getting our short story into physical form for online purchase but for now you can snag a print copy any time we do an in-person event.

I just got notice that my pitch for Tavern Tale will be in an RPG zine! The Zine is going to be so good and on a topic that’s part of my blood – RPGs!! And I have a small contribution inside. Watch for the release and follow @coinoppress

How’s Life?

The summer is hard for me as I just don’t do well in the heat, but we’ve been able to go to some parks and playgrounds in the evenings with our children and make use of the indoor playgrounds and other things like museums and such.

I’m trying to look at unique places to do book signings when my poetry collection releases. I’m also trying to figure out how to offer perks for preordering. Amazon doesn’t actually set up a preorder for print books but it does for ebooks – and I know my poetry and photography is a much better item to have in physical.

Instagram live interview are going well and I’ve met a lot of new people! My series is Creativity – where I sip tea and talk about creative things.