Moving shortly

We're moving at the end of the month, which is both wonderful and a terrible amount of work. Sooo much paperwork! We're having a house built on 10 acres, but meanwhile we'll spend a couple of weeks in an apartment, then move into a camper, soon to be parked on the land until fall, when the house will be hopefully complete. It will be just us and our eldest son, since our daughter's married and the youngest is off to air force boot camp shortly.

Castle had to go back to the breeder; another painful thing. The transition was just too hard on him, and it was the only fair thing to do. Sometimes it's like that, especially with Aussies, but it still hurt. The whole family is grieving. We'll try again with a puppy when we're settled, probably a golden retriever.

Pollen is lame, but other than giving my a headache for a couple of days and general fuzzy brain, it's not too bad.

I'm packing, survival crocheting/stress knitting.

So, I don't have a book. I have the start of one, will work on it as I can. Should be an interesting summer.

Castle

This is Castle. He'll be 2 in May. It's fair to say he saved my writing.

My imagination, which had been supercharged my whole life, faded over the last year. I thought it was stress (teenager with senioritis). I couldn't even look at the computer, unless it was news or Pintrest. I was just going to look at dogs, make a connection with a breeder and maybe get a puppy in the fall. It's an awkward time, as we're selling our house and plan to live in an RV until our new house is built. Besides, we already have a terrier mix, Buck. Don't be greedy, right?

Castle was available. He was the pick of the litter, a show dog...until he lost two front teeth to a bone. His owners loved him, but they're professional breeders and they have a responsibility to their business. They let us adopt him.

Two days later, not only am I sleeping better than I have in a long while, I'm writing. It's a Convergence book, from scratch, and involves ice giants. I thought I was broken, thought about finding a day job. Turns out, I was mourning my Aussie Jack, who we'd lost last year.

Castle isn't Jack, but he filled the Aussie shaped hole in my heart. He's the grace I didn't know I needed, a shy, goofy bundle of love that refuses to let me mope. He's also crazy pretty, with a gait like poetry in motion. I'm so grateful he's mine.❤

What I'm doing

We:

-Married off our daughter in September.
-Are doing online public school for my last kid in school, his senior year. Kid goes to Air force boot camp in the spring.
-Recently fixed a problem that's been keeping me up for a long time. Sleeping deeply every night is amazing!
-Husband got promoted, adjusting to new responsibilities
-joined church decorating committee, because someone needed to step up, and I was someone. I'm now unexpectedly social...and busier. Undoubtedly, it's good for me.

Any of these things would be enough to slow the writing, and all of them together is definitely doing it. I've decided it's just that season of life, try to enjoy it.

Today, I'm going to clean my house, pack the Pintrest worthy willow screens I made (ow, drilling through wood is heavy work. Good thing my husband helped). We're having dinner with friends tonight, going to transform hedge clippings into holiday centerpieces for 100 people. Good times.

My health is great, no trouble with rainy day sinus headaches, so I have hope for spring. Maybe smoke/allergy season will be kinder, too.

Thanks to the wedding, I've discovered an unexpected talent for decorating. Combined with like-minded women of artistic ability and thrifty creativity, our poor church is developing a personality. Our husbands may not like being drafted for the sawing and cutting, but they seem resigned... John even enjoyed parts of it. Doing projects together can be fun.

May your holidays be as cozy and fun,


Autumn Dawn

Working on next book

Working on next Convergence book. No title or release date yet. More info later

Typos, mistakes, let me know here!

No matter how many times I (or my editor) look over a manuscript, things slip through. It's super frustrating, but readers can help! It takes time away from other work to pull up a manuscript and fix stuff, but it's nice to know that I've done the best I can to weed mistakes out.

 Find a typo on a new release? Let me know! Just got this one today:


Message
Hi, I noticed some potential corrections for Autumn Dawn on Kindle. If you have already made them please ignore. After the attack in the dragon mountains Kjertil agrees to challenge Indris not Chaldric. Ria's death throes has the word bugling instead of bulging to describe her eyes. Love the seriese. Please keep up the good work. Best wishes S.

Another one:

The part that caught my attention was the glitch on Cara's birthday changing from turning 22 in the beginning, to stating she had just turned 20 on page 42.

I've enjoyed all the other three books in this 4-book elemental world and have waited anxiously for Cara's story to be written. Autumn Dawn's creation of a world of Elementals is wonderful and spikes the imagination.I've enjoyed all the other three books in this 4-book elemental world and have waited anxiously for Cara's story to be written. Autumn Dawn's creation of a world of Elementals is wonderful and spikes the imagination.The part that caught my attention was the glitch on Cara's birthday changing from turning 22 in the beginning, to stating she had just turned 20 on page 42.

However, I feel as if there were several chapters left out of this book, as it was such a quick ending and there were a couple grammar errors in the beginning of the story which might have been just the formatting of the book to sell? The part that caught my attention was the glitch on Cara's birthday changing from turning 22 in the beginning, to stating she had just turned 20 on page 42. The 22 was a little young in my mind for being involved with such an older elemental, but still worked and flowed for me, it was the turning 20 years old, that had me cringe just a little, as she was just nineteen the day before, and it seemed young for me.

Overall, a good book to read, but the other 3 were more detailed and longer. I recommend reading all four of her books.

However, I feel as if there were several chapters left out of this book, as it was such a quick ending and there were a couple grammar errors in the beginning of the story which might have been just the formatting of the book to sell? The part that caught my attention was the glitch on Cara's birthday changing from turning 22 in the beginning, to stating she had just turned 20 on page 42. The 22 was a little young in my mind for being involved with such an older elemental, but still worked and flowed for me, it was the turning 20 years old, that had me cringe just a little, as she was just nineteen the day before, and it seemed young for me.

Overall, a good book to read, but the other 3 were more detailed and longer. I recommend reading all four of her books.

I've enjoyed all the other three books in this 4-book elemental world and have waited anxiously for Cara's story to be written. Autumn Dawn's creation of a world of Elementals is wonderful and spikes the imagination.

However, I feel as if there were several chapters left out of this book, as it was such a quick ending and there were a couple grammar errors in the beginning of the story which might have been just the formatting of the book to sell? The part that caught my attention was the glitch on Cara's birthday changing from turning 22 in the beginning, to stating she had just turned 20 on page 42. The 22 was a little young in my mind for being involved with such an older elemental, but still worked and flowed for me, it was the turning 20 years old, that had me cringe just a little, as she was just nineteen the day before, and it seemed young for me.

Overall, a good book to read, but the other 3 were more detailed and longer. I recommend reading all four of her books.

I've enjoyed all the other three books in this 4-book elemental world and have waited anxiously for Cara's story to be written. Autumn Dawn's creation of a world of Elementals is wonderful and spikes the imagination.

However, I feel as if there were several chapters left out of this book, as it was such a quick ending and there were a couple grammar errors in the beginning of the story which might have been just the formatting of the book to sell? The part that caught my attention was the glitch on Cara's birthday changing from turning 22 in the beginning, to stating she had just turned 20 on page 42. The 22 was a little young in my mind for being involved with such an older elemental, but still worked and flowed for me, it was the turning 20 years old, that had me cringe just a little, as she was just nineteen the day before, and it seemed young for me.

Overall, a good book to read, but the other 3 were more detailed and longer. I recommend reading all four of her books.

Black Hound coming out in print shortly

Thank you for supporting the release of my ebook, Black Hound! The print version should be available next week (Amazon is reviewing it now).

I celebrated release day by grocery shopping, cleaning house and capturing a swarm of bees in a horse coral to repopulate our be hive.

The bees were starting to swarm when we got there, so I gave the branch a sharp shake and the clump dropped into the cardboard box we brought. Hopefully there's a queen in there; we'll know in a few days. If not, we might be able to buy a queen from a local bee keeper.

It was pretty funny. We were driving down the road on the short trip to our hives and the bees were escaping the cardboard box in the trunk. Of course we were wearing bee suits, because no one wants to deal with bees while driving.

We got out of the car and my husband had a long walk across an uneven field carrying a box of escaping bees to the empty hive. The grass was tall, and predictably we were picking ticks off our bee suits when we were done.

We also had to use a shop vac to get all the leftover bees out of the car, because they didn't want to leave.

We were super excited to get the swarm, agreeing it was one of the best dates ever. Bees are in limited supply and only available in spring, costing about $100 per swarm, and that's not including hives and equipment. We also have three more empty hives, so if you live close to Spokane and have a loose swarm, we'd love to fill our hives.

Bees are necessary for fruit and many other crops and pesticides kill them by the millions. I love eating, so I'm happy to keep the population going when I can. Besides, honey from freshly crushed comb is ecstasy; we're addicted, and our friends say it's better than commercially spun honey. My husband grumbles when we have to buy commercial honey, says it's just not as tasty.

I can't prove it, but I think it's because they get to use the fresh, clean wax their body naturally produces to make storage cells, instead of gunky old wax left over from spun honey. Whatever the reason, yum!

That said, processing honey is a lot of work, and not everyone has the guts to work with bees. Commercial keepers work hard to keep their hives alive and food on our table. In honor of them, I think I'll celebrate with the big bag of cherries I just bought. Mmm, cherries...

Breaker's Ruin is now available in print!

Breaker's Ruin is now available in print!

Not to be confused with Black Hound, which is out in ebook 6/15/2018. Print will follow soon after that.

 

I thought I had figured out how to set a book up in print, no problem, but I give myself a whole day to do it anyway. Yesterday I needed it, because amazon's cover creator glitched. I spend a large chunk of time doing the cover with a template on GIMP. Yay, I learned something new...ready to go back to the easy way...

So what's next? Doing some plotting today, so we'll see about that. Right now I'm working in the Convergence world and it will likely involve dragons...