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Hardcopy Cover - The Journey Stone: A Charlevoix Faerie Tale

I have come to the end, the fruition, of a very long episode of writing, editing, re-writing, formatting, re-formatting, ordering, and re-ordering for Book 2 of The Faerie Tale Chronicles, The Journey Stone: A Charlevoix Faerie Tale. After numerous delays and many sleepless nights, the paperback is now available for sale from retailers worldwide and the copies of hardback and paperbacks due for signatures will be delivered to my house beginning tomorrow. What a long, frustrating journey this one has been! I've learned a lot, though. Lessons that will - hopefully- make the production of Book 3 smoother and faster. 

Both editions can be purchased directly through me HERE

  During all of this REdoing in its various forms the actual writing of Book 3 had been put on hiatus but today I will begin anew; this novel is about 1/3 of the way through its first draft and I've very excited about it! I would like to stay on track for finishing the manuscript by the end of February (it has become a sort of tradition for these novels but we shall see. Like wine, a good novel shall not be done before its time lol. This story is a bit more convoluted and involved in so far as time periods, historical research, etc so there's a bit more to unpack in the crafting of it but it's been so much fun so far! All things going (somewhat) to plan, Book 3- The Mirror Dance: A French Quarter Faerie Tale will be available for purchase at this time next year. *Fingers Crossed*

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

Happy Halloween

 

Look at this- semi-regular blog posts! It's a Halloween Miracle! 

  Halloween morning dawned cold and clear but -as per usual- it's supposed to turn gusty and rainy later on for the Trick or Treaters. Jack and I will be helping to bundle up our Grand-Littles later this evening ahead of their being escorted throughout their neighborhood by their mom and dad. They're young yet so it will be a quick version of the event. 

  I dearly miss Halloweens of my childhood and then again of my children's childhood. Halloweens of my high school and college years must have been fairly uneventful because I don't wax nostalgic for those. I feel like I've spent the last dozen years or so trying to find new secular traditions that will echo those earlier ones but not with much luck. This season is also a highly spiritual one for me that has waxed and waned in practice over the years. Some years I am very elaborate and involved in the spiritual end of Samhain (click that to read about the holy day) and some years I am exceptionally basic in my observances. Strangely enough, the ebb and flow of that doesn't bother me as much as the loss of the secular events. 

 Today- on this Halloween- I am going to work on Book 3's manuscript and put dinner into the crockpot for later on. At the end of the day, I'll light a candle for Halloween's past and those that will be. Later in the week - at the appropriate astrological timing, I'll light more candles; these will bless and honor the Ancestors and Mighty Dead- those of my heart, those of my blood,  and those both known and unknown to me. 

'Tis the season... 

Monday and a little further along the road to Hell...

  I was feeling very virtuous telling Alexa to set an alarm for 6am as I turned off the light last night and climbed into bed. I needed to get up early to finish readying the apartment for the winter-long tenants set to arrive at 10am that morning. Ahhh... those 'good intentions' strike again! I must have ordered it to stop when it went off but I have no recollection of having done so. But when I awoke refreshed and rested my feeling of contentment vanished upon looking at my watch- it was 8am!! Gah!!!

  And so was set the morning pace; I threw clothes on, made coffee, fed the dogs and cat, and paid the Nola electric bill by 8:15. By 8: 45 I had gulped 2 cups of magic bean juice, brushed my teeth, and pulled shoes on.  By 9:55 I mopped my way out of the apartment and locked the door-- Sheesh! Thank goodness I had done a bunch of cleaning and removing of decor the day before or I would never have managed it this morning. The young couple staying until May will arrive at some point today and I'm very grateful for this arrangement. 

   Having run around like a crazy woman I slowed down a little and cleaned up the kitchen from yesterday and mixed up some bread dough. It's chilly in here so it's taking the dough forever to rise and I'm really hoping I didn't mess up the yeast bloom.. ugh. If I did, I did- there's nothing to do for it but to begin again, which I probably won't do today. My goal- should the dough rise- is to bake a round loaf in my large dutch oven and decorate it by scoring it. The Instagram account HERE is my inspiration... I love to bake bread and rarely get to do it in the summer at work due to the combined craziness of schedule and lack of climate control, therefore I do most of my yeast baking in the fall and winter.

  While I wait (impatiently) to see if the dough will rise I'm going to finish going through the hardback edition proof that came in the mail over the weekend. The paperback edition had some issues - par for the course- that the formatter is working on now and my hope is that the hardback will be able to be revised along the same lines with no issues dedicated to it alone.  I'm anxious to get Book 2 completed and out the door to readers so that I can do some major word crunching on Book 3. My goal is to get that manuscript to the editor as soon as March so that it can be sent to the formatter earlier and avoid dumping crazy deadlines on the formatter. (Road. Hell. Intentions. Are you seeing a pattern yet? hahaha!)

So that's my Monday morning. It's noon now and I'm off to begin proofing the hardback of Book 2... have a good day everyone

~Annie

Promises Promises

  

 Try as I might I can't seem to make this blog a regular thing- intentions and the road to hell and all that...

I'll try to do better this year because, truly, writing and jotting assorted trivial day-to-day things here helps prime me for writing in larger chunks- like books lol. 

  So what's happened this year? Welll--- pandemic, POTUS turnover, summer craziness, and the like. 

  Pandemic - the initial Covid 19 virus has mutated and split off just like all the horror movies warned us against but we (as in humanity) seemed to think it wouldn't really happen. It did and now- vaccinated or not, we have 'variants' that are running rampant through the world with the most prevalent at this time being the Delta variant. There are others but this is the one that is most destructive and deadly right now. 

And speaking of vaccines, we have them and they are amazingly effective but because so many people REFUSED TO GET THEM the virus mutated. The vaccines became political and it's been our downfall. 

Summer - socially, it seems as if most of the world has pretty much given up on stringent safety measures and is just hoping for the best. As is usual for me, I'm stuck somewhere in the middle. I miss my friends who all seem to be going out and doing things but I am still a little afraid to go into huge crowds - and I'm not invited, so I guess for now I just hang out at home. (I think it's the alcohol thing again: I haven't drunk alcohol for so long that I sometimes forget that it's an issue..) The summer crowds this year, despite being maskless and basically wide-open safety-wise, were particularly brutal to restaurant and service industry people- I have no idea why. We saw several jaw-dropping behaviors and around the country, other workers reported the same. This leads us to...

Worker shortages. All kinds of people moaning about lazy service workers that won't get off the dole and go to work. Most of the complainers are 1.) business owners not wanting to pay enough for their employees to eat and pay rent (rather than one or the other) or retirees who don't have a dog in the game but feel somehow qualified to critique and judge.  There's also the issue of over 6000 people dead from Covid but we don't hear about that very often.

Given all of that, it was another insanely busy summer and I'm happy for the rest. 

Well, our version of rest, anyway lol. We just finished (yesterday!) putting down the new hardwood flooring in the upstairs. We did the downstairs 2 years ago so we have now completed that project- it only took 13 years hahaha! Last winter we converted the garage into a 1 bedroom apartment that is used for rental income and that has gone very well. There are a few after-summer repairs to be made but that project is also done and it was rented all summer, so we're FINALLY getting house stuff taken care of that we've been whittling away at; it feels good. 

Book 2 in the Faerie Tale Chronicles

Work stuff for winter can now start since the flooring project is done. I got the paperback proof for Book 2 (The Journey Stone: A Charlevoix Faerie Tale)  in the mail yesterday and went through it, marking missed typos, formatting issues, and cover color corrections that need to be done. That will be taken care of this week and a (hopefully final) proof sent back to me for approval. If all goes well it will be available for worldwide purchase within the month. The link above is for pre-orders and the live kindle edition. Today the hardback edition proof is due in so lather, rinse, repeat that process. As usual, the hardbacks are not available for wide release but are collector items available only through me. Once all of that is taken care of I can go back to work on Book 3 which I'm about a third of the way through with Book 4 partially mapped out, whew! All of that needs to be done but you know what? I think I want to paint today lol! I haven't painted in a year and I so miss moving color around on a canvas. I might just disappear into that today...

Well, there we go- basically caught up. Like I said, I will try my hardest to be more productive on this blog, its good for me and I need the writing schedule, to be sure! Feel free to drop a 'hello' in the comments! 

~Annie

Dogs Have Their Own Clock

 

Paperback Edition Cover Featuring My Original Artwork

The sun is just now rising and I've consumed half a pot of coffee already. Those of you who know me even in passing know that I am not a 'oohhh! look at the sunrise!' kind of person but daylight savings time dictates to humans that we move the clock back an hour. Dogs? They don't care and don't follow those rules. Because dogs are smarter than humans most days. That being said, my two Beasties had me up at ten minutes to six this morning. Ugh. But the positive in that is that I will get my spin bike work out done earlier than usual and have more time to get some projects done that have been lagging.

The month of October flew past- as it does. Pandemic or not, it was busy and full of autumn projects and work. The restaurant is closed for the season but the household stuff that gets put off through the summer looms come mid-Septemeber and October is my 'catch up' month. It's not exciting and I won't bore the few of you that read this but it's always satisfying to put the house to rights after so many months of using it only as a place to sleep. Halloween was not very satisfying this year. In fact, I think this was one of the saddest Halloweens I've ever been through. My heart broke to see how many families went above and beyond to provide a fun holiday for their kids while at the same time trying to keep them and everyone else safe. I want holidays to go back to 'normal' but it seems as if that may be a few years from now and maybe the old way will never come back and we'll need to establish a new normal. Day by day my feelings and thoughts vacillate on this. While it was summer and I was hyper-focused on work I kept my vision and worries to a very small point of consciousness- my restaurant, my employees, my customers. All safety precautions outlined by the Health Department and basically the same scenario day after day for 9 weeks or so. That's not to say that it wasn't stressful- it absolutely was but there was a focus that I don't have now and my worrying is allowed free reign. 

 And now it's November. Today my shipment of paperbacks for my book is arriving with world-wide distribution happening on the 6th. The limited-edition hardback was approved and most have been sent out about a week ago. My next endeavor is how to approach independent booksellers in my area and in New Orleans about carrying the paperback edition- ditto for libraries. I've been researching the accepted ways to approach both entities but I haven't yet decided on how exactly I will go about it. There are 4 bookstores and 1 library I would like to ideally have the title in but I really need to take the time to sit down and figure it all out. If any of you have knowledge or contacts in this marketing area please shoot me a message :-)

 Book 2 is about midway completed and Book 3 is sketched out. That may conclude that series, I'm not entirely sure just yet. My goal is a book a year for a minimum of 3 years...

Once the winter holiday season is done I also have some painting projects I would like to do- painting with words is wonderful but my soul also needs color and movement to stay whole. There are some children's chairs awaiting scenery and two canvases that keep calling to me. 

 Right now, though, I'm going to feed the Beasties, change into work out clothes and hop onto my bike.

Take Care, Stay Safe, Wear Your Masks, and Vote Blue

~Annie 

Once Upon A Time...

 Yesterday I finished closing down the restaurant for the remainder of the year. We've been closed for business for a couple of weeks but we needed to catch up on a bunch of things here at the house so we concentrated on those chores then yesterday finished up the fall closing. I'm happy to close the door on the Summer of 2020; may it rest in peace.

 We've been busy and productive here at casa de Russell; garage cleaned out, storage shed built, yard cleaned up for the fall, and taxes done. Today Jack returned to work at his place of employment after taking a few days off for the chores listed above and I had time to get back to work on Book 2 of the Ashlynne Barrow series. It was wonderful to dive back into writing and I tackled quite a bit of story line before going out for a walk. 

Kindle Edition Cover of The Changeling: A New Orleans Faerie Tale- available here

 Book 2 being written means, of course  that Book 1 is completed and I couldn't be happier. 2 cases of the special edition Hardbacks are being printed as I type and should be arriving here in a couple of weeks. The finishing touches are being put on the cover and interior front pages (title page, copywrite page, etc.) of the paperback and then that will be proofed, approved and ready for distribution. Its been a loooonnnggg haul and an emotional roller coaster. The learning curve was steeper than I had expected regarding the technical aspects of formatting and cover design and I am forever grateful to my son for taking on the mantel of that work and doing it so beautifully. Emotionally, this story originated from a devastating loss. I began writing as a way to process that episode so, while the story is fantastical  its birth was traumatic. Many of the scarier elements within the story are true-to-my-life and have been adapted to fit the narrative making the entire story and process quite cathartic. And like any good Hero's Journey tale my helpers came along as I needed them and just in the nick of time; M and K to encourage and lovingly critique after I received a devastating report from another author that had me ready to quit before I had even half finished. M. gently continued on in the proof reading while K reminded me that some people act from a place of their own ego and to let that kind of thing go.  The loss of a loved employee from the restaurant brought to me E- not only an amazing employee but a young woman finishing her degree in literature and beginning work as an editor. E generously agreed to take on my book for the final editing with a ridiculously tight schedule for its completion along with the killer long hours at the restaurant and she did both so well I began to question whether a real life Fae had come into my everyday world. The individual sales of the limited edition hardback were higher in volume than I ever could have predicted and I can't wait to hear what my Readers think of the story, of Ashlynne and of course, of Morag. The Kindle edition has been out for a little over a week with over 100 units snapped up already; I'm anxiously awaiting the amazon reviews. If you have a kindle version please, please, please leave an amazon review- they are more important to authors than gold. 

To purchase your kindle edition go HERE  To purchase a signed author hardback or paperback go here

 So, Book 2. More fantasy born from real-life BS. In fact, much of this book is 'ripped from the headlines' of my life but if I told it as non-fiction no one would believe it except for those who lived it with me and most of those people have melted back into the forest from whence they came. The book will be dark - ish with amazing imagery painted for you in glorious words and phrases. There will be more original art as well - just like in Book 1 - and a special edition Hardback for purchase through the website. Oh- and Book 2 is taking place in Charlevoix... I can't wait to take you back into my world..

The rains are continuing outside the window and its already getting dark. The winds are whipping the tree limbs making the fall leaves fly.. its a perfect night to read a Faerie Tale ~ 

Until Next Time-

Be Safe & Wear Your Masks

Annie