Newsletter - November 15, 2022

My wife took our youngest for a mother-daughter camping trip through our church over the weekend. They managed to pick the weekend with the first real cold front... temps down in the high 30s in cabins with little heat. While our youngest loved it, my wife returned shivering and sleep-deprived. Meanwhile, I stayed back with our two older girls, and we spent much of Saturday watching movies. Enola Holmes 2, we enjoyed a great deal. Thor, Love and Thunder--cringy. We had fun though, even with the cringy movie. I have fond memories of movie-binges with my dad. Hopefully, they'll have some of the same.

I am happy to report that I did a much better job of re-instilling my writing habits over the last week. I'm not entirely sure what has changed since I wrote my first books--more kids' basketball and dance for sure--but my time is more limited now, and I have to acknowledge that and stop beating myself up about my writing progress. I have my habits going, but less time. And that's okay.

I pinged IngramSpark about why my book wasn't available yet--we are well past their reported deadlines. Unfortunately, their response was simply that they've had a large influx of work. Maybe this is normal. But I haven't submitted Books 2-4 yet, as I wanted to get through the process with Book 1 first. Given how long this is taking, I suppose I better just get going on submitting the rest. I see that I will have to bump up the price on Book 2 to break even, and that tells me I'll have to bump up prices on Books 3 & 4 even more. I don't know the right financial move--what sells through whom and how many would go through media where I would lose money at a lower price. I wish someone more experienced would step alongside me and talk me through it. It is hard for me to imagine that my situation is unique, or even rare, but my attempts to find answers on FB groups or author friends failed.

Snippet of the week:

I laughed, but recognizing that the angry voice from above was my mother’s, I sighed and left Hughelas’s side to climb through the hatch.

“And you thought this would help me to trust you?” she shouted. Though the light was dim, the morning held at bay by thick clouds, it was clear I had overslept. While we still floated past Telloria’ahlia, we’d left our mooring behind. Mother wasn’t angry about that. She wasn’t shouting at the captain or Beldroth or the crew.

She yelled at a golden-skinned, golden-haired High Elf, who looked back with chagrin. “No,” he said calmly, “but neither would you learn to trust me if our paths forever diverged. Elliah!” He waved me over. “We are about to pass my home. Let me show you should you ever need to find your way back.”

“I’m going to forever diverge our paths right now,” my mother muttered, grabbing the much-taller High Elf by his fancy coat and pulling him to the rail of the ship. Beldroth took it a step further, picking up Zaros and lifting him high in the air as though he would attempt to fling the gold-skinned elf to the shore.

Oh, yeah… that. Some things had changed since the day before. When we’d reached the ship in the dead of night, Beldroth had been standing on the deck, hammer ready, just as we’d left him. “Back on duty?” my mother had asked him.

“Never left,” he replied.

My mother shook her head. “You fool.”

To which he replied:

“A fool, in truth, I may well be.

A ship that wanders through the sea.

But I know peace, and love… doth thee?

If not, then e’er the fool I’ll be.”

The captain’s intent had been clear enough, and he’d told her no. Hughelas and I exchanged a look. “He recited that poem to my mother a lot,” he whispered.

My mother kept shaking her head, but her words were gentle. “May I keep you company on your watch then?”

Hughelas and I, we’d left them there talking as we’d joined the crew in the hammocks under the decks.

And it appeared they’d connected enough that the Warder would act on her behalf.

“Goodness,” Zaros muttered calmly, high above the deck rail in Beldroth’s arms, but it didn’t stop him from pointing to the southwest shore, where the hint of morning sun illumined a vast open area with an intimidating stone structure in the middle. “My home.”

“By all that’s green,” Hughelas said from behind me. “That’s your house?”

Even my mother’s mouth hung open.

“I call it the Barrakrea. Preparation for the coming apocalypse.”

“Of course, you would prepare a hiding place for an apocalypse,” my mother huffed.

“Not for me so much,” Zoras said from his precarious position held aloft by Beldroth. “I’m not convinced I’ll live to see lunch. But it is there for the elves.”

Second ticked by. Beldroth raised an eyebrow at my mother.

“Gah! Mother of f—. Put him down,” my mother said. When Beldroth bent his knees in preparation to throw the High Elf, my mother hastily added, “Inside the boat.” The crew watched with silent amusement as Beldroth lowered the High Elf to the deck. My mother, head and shoulders shorter than the thin High Elf, stood before him with muscles clinched, and finally barked, “You are so infuriating!”

“Your father once told me I angered his silverleaf,” Zoras said, straightening his jacket. “Is that possible, or was he using a sexual metaphor among Wood Elv—”

“It was not… the latter,” my mother interrupted, to the laughter of the crew. “I’m sure he was just exaggerating your irritability… though not by much.”

o To-Do list for writing last week:

~~Email updates~~
Restart writing habits... take 2.

o To-Do list for writing this week:

Email updates
Get Elliah to the Heartland :) [easier said than done... she still has one big obstacle to overcome. she might not make it by next week.]

Immerse Yourself...

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May you get lost this week in another world.

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Steven J Morris

Newsletter - November 15, 2022

A little progress and a little distraction

Behind the scenes...

I use AI in my writing. There, I said it.