Newsletter - October 25, 2022


After a few weeks under water, I’ve reached a cove with life-giving air. Friday the 14th, at 9:13pm, we finished our project. Or… we thought we had. We found a problem mid-week, just when I was starting to sleep through parts of the night again, and we had to scramble to fix it. Now, I’m getting two conflicting messages from our leaders. “You need to take some time off to recharge,” and, “Don’t forget that XYZ is due by the end of October.”
​
​*sigh*

On Saturday, I smoked a brisket and turkey legs, and we invited a few friends over. Then one of the couples invited us to join them for an hour or two on the river with their jet skis and tubes. 👍 Active relaxation.

About two weeks went by without my darkening the door of my virtual writing room. (I don’t have such a thing, but now that I’ve tossed out the metaphor, I want one.) But over the last few days, I’ve eked out several paragraphs, so in a mere 99 years, I should be close to finishing the book!

What other news? I’m going to do another Books and Brews event at SudsMonkey on Oct 30th. I’ve got some other stuff brewing (haha), but nothing worth noting at this juncture. I also have many publishing frustrations, but I just deleted them all from the newsletter… I couldn’t take the whining.

Oh, one semi-bright point -- I finally understand why Barnes & Nobles won't buy my books. I'm switching to IngramSpark to remedy the situation. Ironically, the problem is that Barnes & Noble Press DOES NOT SUPPORT Barnes & Noble store returns, and the stores won't order a book that isn't returnable. So, I made about a two-year long mistake, with a good bit of effort involved as well, to try and integrate with B&N. Unfortunately, I'm not finding IngramSpark particularly easy to integrate with either. I messed up the BarCode on the cover of my first submission, and it isn't clear to me how to fix it.

o To-Do list for writing last week:

  • Email updates
  • Plug away at Book 1 of Thaumatropic Roots - very little writing for the last few weeks

o To-Do list for writing this week:

  • Email updates
  • Try to get my books in B&N. (It'll take more than a week... this week, just get Book 1 submitted on Ingram)
  • Restart writing habits.

Previous Newsletters

​​May you get lost this week in another world.

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Steven J Morris

If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.

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