Greetings!

Life is crazy. I finished my murder mystery party and got that thing hosted. I also shot a lot of footage of it, because I thought “instead of just snapping some pictures like I do every year, why don’t I turn this already stressful and exciting event into the biggest video editing project I’ve ever done. I edited a four minute vlog two weeks ago, how hard can it be?”

I’m also trying to get my next story for Hooked all wrapped up and on track. This is the biggest and most intense story I’ve written yet, so I’m very excited to make it perfect.

But above and beyond everything else, there’s this whole issue of me launching a book in early May, and the fact that release day is little more than four months away. It is time to start doing some hardcore editing.

I’m really lucky I enjoy the competitive nature of marketing and got so good at it during my three years of DECA in high school. I haven’t taken a business class in years, but I’ve got a strong sense of what needs to happen in order to at least get the ball rolling. The picture of me with all the medals is from my senior year state DECA competition. I took first place. I had no idea how much social media would change the landscape of publishing, and that if I wanted to be an artist I was going to have to be my own best marketer.

Right now I’m prepping for a big pre-order online party and trying to work up the nerve to query book bloggers about possibly reviewing my book. If I had more hours in the day, they’d be going straight into this project. Marketing a debut novel is a blackhole of unknown outcomes that just sucks in all the energy you can possibly give it.

Fortunately, like I said, I love it 😀

I just redid the website, so click around a bit and get a feel for how much better I’m getting at judging aesthetics and web design. I had to get my computer programmer boyfriend to figure out how to get the URL working right and get my mailing list up and running (join it! emails are infrequent but chock full of important book-release info and other art project details)

I feel very professional, and have high hopes for The Neverland Wars. I know I’ve got a little readership that will help me get off the ground, and I have a faith in the story itself. Hopefully this trust isn’t misplaced. We shall see.