School is out for summer! For those new to the newsletter, I have three teenage daughters, all stressed out from the last weeks of finals. Only the oldest (17 yrs) gets that I have to keep working while they are out of school. 😒I'm getting closer to having two young drivers, and I expect that is going to be a real mess on our car situation... but I probably have one more summer before its a problem.

My youngest is the upside down girl, celebrating the end of the school year at the community pool. Love the reactions from the other kids.

There's lots of "exciting" stress around our house lately, as my girls get old enough to drive, take summer jobs, think about college. It's a lot!

Update: my oldest just got her first official job. Mad Greens. We have a short family vacation, then she has a basketball tournament, then she starts her job! It’s such an exciting and stressful time!!!

Welp, first pass of Bones of Cenaedth is done! I cut so much in the end that it is down to 54k words. But now the story ties together. I sliced and rearranged so much that characters are referenced before they’re introduced, scenes are "remembered" that no longer happened. Heck, I’m still finding pieces that use a character that died in book 1 from the original sketch-out of the entire Thaumatropic Roots storyline. So it’s a mess, but it’s a good story.

I passed it on to Edith, fellow author and so far, the only person really willing to chew up my books and spit out significant changes. And this is the time to look at big structural changes… before I add in the goo that makes the story gel.

I kicked off a Reedsy request for cover art... because I'm not losing money fast enough with mere advertising costs. Seriously, so far I've used folks I've found on Fiverr, or done the artwork myself, and the lowest Reedsy bid I've had is 5x what I've spent on Fiverr. The highest bid (so far) was $11k! I was shocked. But when I flip it around and consider how frequent/infrequent jobs are for cover creation, they're probably not rolling in the dough. Still, I don’t think I should spend that.

I want to send a thank you out to those who rated/reviewed my books after my request last newsletter. I also got data back on which of my Amazon ads gets the most clicks for Mother of Trees. The ad below got 25x more clicks than the next best ad, and >100x more than the least-clicked ad. I just think that's interesting. I wouldn't have necessarily picked that one to be the "best", but that's one thing they warn you about in the Amazon Ad classes: You are not your readers. I always think, "But aren't I?" I mean, I've read my books more than anyone. But still, it's good advice to just follow the data, and not base your ad decisions on what you would click.

Her people want her dead. The goddess who promised her life is fading from memory. Can this feisty young elf write her own destiny?

Relatedly, I've got a new thing I'm doing: I'm picking reads from the "Also Bought" section of my books on Amazon. I've mentioned that before, but it's still fun. I'm just about through Lindsey Buroker's Death Before Dragons series.