July Wrap-Up & August Goals

What a whirlwind of a month, filled with emotional highs and lows!

July Wrap-Up: 

• The Steel Magic book launch went really well, and I think the book had a great reception where I talked about it online and in person. Thank you to everyone who helped spread the word and promote my second novel. Book 2 of the Steel Empires series, which features the continued adventures of warrior-mages Toria and Kane, is available in both print and ebook form. (The Steel Victory ebook is still 99 cents if you need to catch up first.)
• My meandering blog tour around the interwebs also did a lot of help promote my new novel, and I thank all of the authors who hosted me!
• I had a blast at my book release party at East City Bookshop in Washington, DC! You can check out my recap or one from my publisher.
• While I will continue to promote Steel Magic, writing a series means always looking forward. I’m pleased to announce that book 3, tentatively titled Steel Blood, is currently with my editor for review.
• My other major event this month was Confluence, a great convention in Pittsburgh. I posted my con report last night if you missed it.
• In all the excitement, I someone managed to forget avoid not write any book reviews this month. Oops.
• And because of the aforementioned emotional highs and lows, Camp NaNoWriMo was a bust. A spectacular 0 words written on book 4 despite every good intention. On the other hand…
• I critiqued almost 20k words for a the Confluence writer’s workshop. And I also proofread an upcoming novel for my publisher. Look for me to squee more about that book soon, because it was amazing!

August Goals:

1. Book 4 needs to be written! Let’s shoot for 15k to 20k words this month.
2. Book reviews also need to be written! I currently have 8 in the queue.
3. Fulfill my contributor commitments to an awesome new fanzine, Speculative Chic. (Which you should definitely check out if you haven’t yet! We are officially live this week.)
4. I literally can’t think of anything else. I have no events planned. I guess I could focus on blogging this month, since I have a list of ideas that I haven’t gotten to yet. Let me know if there’s anything you really want my take on!

I imagine that this month will also be filled with lots of Pokemon Go. My office is near the water, so as you can see above, I have magikarp coming out my ears. Now I need to find some eevees!