Tuesday Morning -

 Good Morning,

  Today is all about Thanksgiving prep; the turkey needs to be brined, cake prepped (we're celebrating my daughter and granddaughter's birthdays after dinner on Thursday) and supplies assembled. It's not going to be an overly complicated affair- I even bought cute disposable plates to use instead of the china this year! But I do like to figure out what can be done a few days ahead of time if need be. 

'By The Light Of The Moon' -
original art by Annie Russell

  I also need to get my cat to the vet for bloodwork- the Dr. suspects that she has cancer and I guess this is to get a baseline of what's happening. She's young - only about 9- so this is very surprising and disturbing news. Tilly is most definitely MY cat- she has little use for anyone else unless they are on board to feed her and clean her litter box. I'm holding out (unrealistic, I know) hope that this is all a severe bout of IBS but I guess I'll know more next week. 

  I went down to New Orleans to visit my son last week and catch up with friends there, it was such a nice time; I thoroughly enjoyed it. If I could finagle a way to leave Northern Michigan January 1-April1 every year for Nola I sure would do it. It's as expensive there, though, as it is here so it may be a while before I can manage that. For now, we'll bunk with our son; we'll go back down for January for the month and my husband will do some work while we're there. I, hopefully, will be editing Book 3 in the Faerie Tale Chronicles. *fingers crossed* 

  This brings us to the books; UGH. Getting Book 2 out has been a monumental pain in the rear. Its been edited and ready for formatting since the beginning of September with a release date of this month. Enter Hurricane Ida, printing snafus, distributor issues with 'supply chains', and on and on and I'm now set to get the second set of proofs next week. If the Publishing Gods are smiling they will be right this time and I can order the books that have been pre-ordered from customers and get them out in December. This is SO frustrating- I am not a 'late is ok' kind of person so weeks after the public release date is making me tear my hair out and has effectively killed any desire to work on Book 3 (which is about a third of the way completed for its first draft.) And this is why being traditionally published rather than being an Indie Author/Publisher is easier- traditionally published authors can just write and re-write, the other stuff is handled by someone else- or a bunch of someone else's. I have queried SO MANY agents with absolutely NO reply (not even a rejection) so, for now, the publishing houses aren't in my cards. If any of you reading this have an in with an agent please please please help a tired author out and get ahold of me.

   So that's where I'm at right now, kind of spinning my wheels. The winter holidays are basically here and I need to get my head in that game ASAP so I can enjoy the time and have faith that everything else will work out fine. 

~Annie