Announcements!

A few announcements today!

First, I’m super excited to show off the new cover for The Country Omega, which fellow author R.A. Steffan made for me.  She’s a whiz with graphics, and whipped this out for me in no time flat, and I think she did a fabulous job.  I like the final cover a ton, and hopefully you all like it too!

The final bits and pieces are going into the book now – I just have to finish writing up the acknowledgements and decide how much of a sneak peek at the sequel I want to include.  The goal is to have all of this done by next week, so that I can put it up for pre-order on Amazon, which is super exciting, and when it actually happens, I’m sure you’ll be able to hear my squee from wherever you happen to be located.

In the meantime, I decided to sign up for the 2016 Reading Challenge on GoodReads.  It’s not that I don’t read – I actually read a ton, particularly when I’m rocking the baby to sleep.  It was worse when he was still tiny and colicky; he refused to sleep at all unless we held him.  Thank goodness for Kindle Paperwhites; I think mine’s seen about 100,000 hours of service by now.

At the moment I’m reading Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, which is just as lovely as I thought it would be, and I’m relishing all the wonderful descriptions in it, as well as the depictions of terrible people (as seen through the eyes of a cantankerous elderly man).  Now if I can just find more books like this one, I’ll be through the 25 in a heartbeat.

Mostly, this is one way of keeping myself accountable – and getting a sense of how much I’m actually reading, too.  I’ve signed up to read 25 books in 2016, which I should be able to meet easily, given that I can make my way through a book in a few days, depending on the length.  (A YA novel?  Three or four days.  War and Peace? Might be a bit longer.)

It’s the same principle behind why I’ve signed up for Get Your Words Out for the last two years (this will be my third).  It’s not so much for the challenge of writing X-number of words per year.  It’s more to keep myself accountable for writing at all – plus it comes with a nifty spreadsheet that lets you tabulate words based on story and day, and gives you pretty pie charts and whatever.  (I am such a sucker for a nice spreadsheet.)

(If you’re interested in joining – you still can through the end of the month, via LJ or Dreamwidth!  It’s fun and free and if you don’t make your word count, no one will tar and feather you.)

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In the meantime, I’m busily working on the second book in the Downing Series, The Country Alpha.  The baby was nice enough to take a power-house nap Monday morning, so I got a lot done, and after taking a short break from it following Nano, I’m ready to dive right back into it.  I’m just over the halfway point, and I’m so excited to write what happens next.

Next week – a sneak peek at The Country Omega, and hopefully a chance to preorder it, too!