The Writing Wrap, Autumn 2024
To Poison a King $0.99 sale, Elvish price drop, writing updates, life stuff, and more!
Hello, happy autumn.
My dog is getting old.
I remember the day we picked him from the litter. It had long been a dream of mine to choose a puppy like that, to compare the siblings side by side and say, you. We stood in that Texas field for ages, holding up one dog after the next (this one has intelligent eyes, that one seems playful) before deciding on him.
I often wonder if we chose wrong. He has been, for most of his life, trouble. He has that anxious, high strung energy that makes it hard to take him places, and I did everything right when he was young, I swear it. Training and puppy classes and socialization at Home Depot and the park and down big streets with trucks racing by. Well? He can sit and stay, and when we play fetch, he sometimes even brings the ball back.
But he has settled with age. He is slower to get up. When he falls asleep on the couch, his skin relaxes, and he looks like a furry sack of bones. Are you dead? I ask. He opens an eye and flops his tail.
My feelings about him have changed over time. I used to get frustrated by his barking and his scrambling, his appetite for sticks and socks and all manner of things dogs are not supposed to swallow. Now as I pull yet another piece of trash from his mouth, I sigh and give him a pat. I tell him I love him before I leave the house, which is something I never used to do, but he’s ten years older than he used to be. I guess I’m ten years older, too.
What I’m currently working on.
I recently got the edits back for a project that I have said very little about (but hopefully will soon!) and spent the last two weeks focused on almost nothing else. I hadn’t opened this manuscript in over a year, which seems wild now I think of it, and it’s shocking how different the story sounds now than it did to me then. That’s the funny thing about publishing. By the time this book comes out, it’ll have been six years since I began writing it (more like three since I did the bulk of the work). I’ve changed in that time. My writing has changed, too. If I wrote this story again today, it would sound completely different. I’m still really proud of it.
Now that that’s back off my desk (for now—my editor will likely request one more round of revisions), I’m refocusing my attention on the book I’ve nicknamed Thieves. I started writing Thieves last November, which makes this the one year mark, and more or less puts me right on track. My hope is to finish revisions by the end of the year, and I’ve written out a schedule to make that happen.
I talked recently on Instagram about how I have two main methods for tracking my writing progress: time-based tracking where I set a stopwatch and literally just track the hours I work (my usual method), and progress-based tracking where I break each chapter into three steps and then give each step a deadline. The steps are sketch (where I get the basic ideas of the chapter down), polish (where I start to add details and make my random thoughts flow in a coherent order), and perfect (where I try to make the writing beautiful, or funny, or both, depending on the book).
It works pretty well, and I prefer both these methods to counting words, which is the strategy many authors use (by default, it seems). Wordcounts tend to be useful at first and then less useful as you get into editing, since editing a book rarely involves adding words. Since I want credit for the effort I spend polishing a manuscript, time tracking and progress tracking it is.
What’s been going on in my non-book world lately.
In my summer newsletter, I told the story of how I underwent a surgery that ended in complications. That saga is, unfortunately, not finished. Last month, I went back under anesthesia and landed myself yet another post-op fever, which (having done this once before) sent me straight to the end of my rope. It doesn’t help that developing a fever after surgery is apparently common but also cause for panic, and that doctors are obligated to suggest the most extreme forms of care. You’re fine, but go to the ER because fever means infection which means sepsis which means you’ll die.
I did not go to the ER (this time, anyway). And I was fine. Am fine. Whatever.
I think maybe, possibly, this will actually be the end of it. Or maybe not. It’s gotten to that point, really. I’m tired of being sick, I’m exhausted by the healthcare system, and if I have to go through another surgery, I will probably start smashing plates.
I will tell the entire story, in detail, once it’s behind me. So: not yet.
With that said, now that I’m feeling better, I’m really feeling better. I think when you hit a low, and then you come back from it, everything feels dewy and bright. I’ve had a severe case of new lease on life and for the past four weeks, I’ve been firing on all cylinders. I’m hitting my workout goals, and my house is spotless, and my nails are painted, and my meals are prepped, and I’m taking creative photos, and I started yoga again, and getting 10k steps a day, and setting aside time to read, and not scrolling, and my skin looks great, and my manuscript is killer, and I made those appointments I’d been putting off, and on and on. I know it can’t last. This motivated I can do everything energy really only goes so far. But four weeks is actually a long time to be so inspired, and I’ll take it while I can.
All my recent book news.
To Poison a King is on sale for $0.99!
My latest romantic fantasy To Poison a King is on sale for $0.99 on Kindle this week! Fairytale vibes, lyrical writing, a journey, love friendship, etc. Grab your copy before the deal ends!
Elvish price drop.
Elvish is my debut novel and kicks off when the elf Ellina discovers a human named Venick wandering her lands. The penalty for trespassing is death, but for reasons (no spoilers) she decides to spare his life. What follows is a journey of friendship, war, and love spanning three books. I will always have the biggest, softest place in my heart for this series, no matter how many stories I write. The book had permanently dropped in price from $3.99 to just $0.99 on Kindle.
The Elvish Trilogy audiobooks are coming to you as a boxed set!
Tantor Media is producing The Elvish Trilogy as an audiobook boxed set. The set will be available on December 24, 2024. I’ll keep you posted with links when they go live!
Read my interview with Canvas Rebel.
Canvas Rebel and I had a great talk. We chat about handling rejection (specifically when it comes to querying), how I got into writing, resources I recommend for authors, and the rewards of creative work. You can read the full interview here.
My latest book recommendations.
I leave my five star recommendations on Goodreads and Bookbub, and I encourage you to follow me there if you want to stay up to date with book recs. Here are a few recent favorites that stand out to me.
If you want the most outrageous I-don’t-even-know-what fantasy, with sapphic side-plot romance, hilarious insults, and worldbuilding that is truly something else, read Gideon the Ninth.
If you want yet another recommendation for an m/m regency-era book from K.J. Charles (yes I am still working my way through her backlog no I have not yet found one I don’t like) read The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting.
If you want a moody m/m dark academia fantasy that I’ll admit I haven’t finished because I just started it last night but that I already feel confident enough recommending because it’s really that strong read Don’t Let the Forest In.
If you want to know why literally all the books I read and recommend these days are queer, wait.
Links to my book freebies.
Who doesn’t love a freebie?!
Free fantasy books from fellow authors.
Every quarter, I partner with fellow authors who are offering free and discounted books. It’s a great way to discover new favorites, so follow the links below to check out the full giveaways.
Free Book Friday - 35 books
Free SFF for November - 56 books
Women in Fantasy - 67 books
Fall Themed SFF - 53 books
More Free Fantasy for November - 57 books
Yes More Free SFF Books! - 127 books
Free Romantasy - 47 books
November SFF Freebies - 120 books
No Fear November Giveaway - 121 books
Fantastic Realms - 71 books
The River of Reversal is my short story, and it’s free.
The River of Reversal is a short story that takes place six years before the start of my full length novel To Poison a King and introduces Selene as she was in early childhood, before she makes the mistake that changes her life. The story (specifically, the legend of the River) plays a major role in the plot of the full length book, so if you’re interested in the series, it’s a great way to dip your toes into some of the lore.
You can download the story for free onto your preferred e-reader through BookFunnel, or you can quickly access a web version on my site.
A few final housekeeping things.
Find me on social media.
I’m mostly on Instagram and you can follow me there. You can also find me on Goodreads and BookBub. I have a Twitter (X, whatever) but I don’t really use it.
Leaving your review for To Poison a King.
The more reviews a book has, the more attention it tends to attract. To everyone who has taken the time to leave a review for To Poison a King, thank you, thank you, thank you. Your support has directly impact my success as an author.
If you’d like to support me, leaving a review is the easiest way to do that!
Final thoughts.
Thank you for sticking around, reading what I have to say and encouraging me on this journey. And as always, happy reading.
- sg