If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humorβI 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.
Treasure
I'm not saying I love my dogs more than my kids, but my dogs never complain about the photos I want to post. Plus, Murphy is adorable with his new toy. He's playing with it right now as I type. And he's gotten gentler as he's aged, so this green, crinkly dragon has a shot at lasting for a while. Maybe.
We drove down to Mission, TX to see my wife's dad and step-mom on their ranch. The weather was gorgeous, and we relaxed and started our break from school and work. Then hopped back to Austin to celebrate our Christmas at home by poisoning our good friends' peanut-allergic baby with peanut-butter fudge. So they had a not-so-relaxing Christmas Eve at Dell Children's Medical Center. π₯π€¦ββοΈ Everybody is recovered and hopefully rested up from that misadventure.
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My oldest daughter splurged at the Barnes & Noble half price hardback sale, and then did something even crazier - she let me post a picture of her! Her excitement at her book-haul was one of the gifts I treasured this holiday.
Writing Updates
Book 3 released on Christmas Day. It stumbled out the door with a hiccup on the Amazon site, probably from too much egg-nog, but it made it.
The Audible of Book 1 also released before Christmas, which was shockingly fast -- it went extremely smoothly and beat the 10-day turnaround by a week. That was really cool, b/c it enabled me to compound the posts over Christmas. Following Jillian's sound (haha) advice, I uploaded the promo codes for the Audible to AudiobooksUnleashed. Folks already picked up the first round of USA codes, though there are many UK codes still available β Iβm open to suggestions on how to advertise their availability.
I was pretty lazy when it came to my to-do list for last week. Spending time with the family. :)
o To-Do list for writing last week:
Email updatesFigure out how to back-up files to Google Drive (realizing how much I will lose if hard drive crashes)okay, this felt like kind of a big deal -- I won't lose everything now if my hard drive crashes.- Poke on Amazon hardback creation
Order some bookmarks.- Fix the logo on website & books (but not in a rush before Book 3 comes out... I'm getting comfortable with the idea that as a self-published author, one of the advantages is that releases can be a little more fluid).
o To-Do list for writing this week:
- Email updates
- Poke on Amazon hardback creation
- Fix the logo on website & books (I did actually start, but didn't make much headway).
Previous Newsletters
- βHappy Holidays - 12/19/2021
- βA week of Promotions - 12/12/2021
- βElf on the Shelf and the Bless-Yous of Winter - 12/05/2021
- βThanks have been given - 11/30/2021
- βReviews, but not bookish reviews... - 11/23/2021
- βLights, digital recording device, actionβ¦ - 11/16/2021
- βAnnnnd... cue Christmas! - 11/09/2021
- βBook 3 Hype-Up Coming Soon - 11/02/2021
- βLosing Faith, a Calyx Twins Story - 10/26/2021 π Losing Faith, a Calyx Twins Story.pdfβ
- βNew pics for Book 1 - 10/19/2021
- βHappy Birthday, Middle Egg - 10/12/2021
- βAge Before Duty -10/05/2021 πβ Age-Before-Duty.pdfβ
- βGrundle's Hope - 9/28/2021 π Grundle's-Hope.pdfβ
Steven J Morris
If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humorβI 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.
I promise Iβve made progress on Father of Stones (FoS). Here's a screenshot to prove it: click the photo to get to the live data showing progress But... I have put a little time elsewhere. I want to invite you to try this web-game Iβve been building out. It was meant to be a role-playing game around Thaumatropic Fractures, but ended up being focused on Thaumatropic Roots. https://tfrpg.sjmorriswrites.com https://tfrpg.sjmorriswrites.com The game will ask you to use your email to associate...
I built a tracking page for Father of Stones (FoS) this week. I did not, notably, write very much of said book this week. There's a joke in there about creative avoidance and I'm not going to pretend I don't see it. Anyway β here's what I made instead. Word Count Over Time A live chart of Father of Stones' progress since late June. I'm not smoothing over the slow weeks. There's a very flat stretch from June 'til August where I worked on the Eigenthrope story, then another flat stretch through...
Yesterday I needed to remember exactly how a character destroyed a dragon artifact three books ago. I didn't dig through my own novels to find itβI asked an AI I built to search them for me. It's called the Grimoire: a mini-AI system I put together with Pinecone that I can ask questions about my own booksβhair color in a different epoch, a side character I want to bring back, a detail I'd otherwise lose momentum digging for. It keeps me writing instead of hunting. That's the quiet way AI has...