Monday, January 29, 2018

Poor, neglected blog...

Well, folks, it has been a busy few months since the release of Traitor's Hope. I didn't mean to go radio silent, but it happened anyway. Between cover design and formatting work, the holidays, writing, and taking care of my daughter, there hasn't been much time for blogging or anything else.

Still, I aim to do better in the coming months, and hope you'll forgive me for missing December entirely and only sneaking one quick blog post in here at the end of January.

Because it has been a while since I've written, we're going to hop straight to bullet points to cover as much as possible without burying you in an endless pile of text.

  • The Traitor's Hope launch has gone quite well--not as well as I'd hoped, but better than I expected, so that's something. :-) It has also led to a dusting off of Blade's Edge, and lots of copies of both books are selling each month (*lots is a relative term, lots more than were selling prior to the launch, which is to say I went from selling 1-3 copies per month to 1-3 copies per day--that's a huge increase, but it's still peanuts in the publishing world). 
  • My cover design and formatting business is chugging along nicely. I have gotten a lot of design work from November to now and I am really looking forward to sharing the designs I did for a relaunch of a series that I was hired for, but that won't happen until Feb/Mar because the author is timing the relaunch for that period and I'm (understandably) not allowed to reveal the covers before that. In the meantime, I have designed a few other covers that I can share, and I've created a number of pre-made covers to sell, so it's probably worth going to check out my new design site: https://virginialamcclain.wixsite.com/vmdesign (I am working on transferring the domain name from my old site, but it's not working properly yet, so for now we get the free domain assigned by the host site.) 
  • Work on the Victoria Marmot series has stalled out a bit during the month of January (and most of December) but is due to start back up again in the next week as my husband takes some time off to stay home with Cedar for a bit so I can knock out some serious writing.
  • I have big plans to schedule myself some outdoor adventures in 2018 as I have been sorely missing them. I got to climb on real rock in November for the first time in two years and it was sooooooooooo good. I have to get back to more of that, so I am working on taking some time for myself. How can I model being a proper badass to Cedar if I don't take time to go play outside? 
  • It is cold and snowy here in Winnipeg but the river has frozen up nicely so there is lots of skating to be had and it is sunny even when it's cold out, so I remain happy. 
  • I got a new pour over coffee set up for Christmas and my mornings are now a happy time filled with delicious coffee and reading books to a one year old who can now point to the pictures and say the names of the things she sees, so that's a pretty fantastic way to start my day.
Well, I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but I have to get back to some design work. I have a limited window for productivity while Cedar is asleep and I need to make use of as much of it as I can. Here are the three newest pre-made covers. They're available for purchase for $50 over on my new site (again https://virginialamcclain.wixsite.com/vmdesign) or you can book me for a custom cover over there too. Hope everyone is off to a good start in the New Year!