Misty Zaugg's Blog - Posts Tagged "flu"

Hi friends,

In two days, Deadly Rescue, the final book in our Escaping the Virus trilogy will be out! It's always a bit bittersweet to finish up a series, though we left a few small threads that could be teased into extending the series in the future.



And since I tell you about all the deals first, Deadly Lockdown will be on sale for 99c all next week to celebrate! We really appreciate your support!

Deadly Lockdown follows Kate and Alisa, two sisters fighting to survive a surge in the fictitious Siberian Flu that makes the world implode around them. We wrote the sisters with real and complex personalities, each with flaws that they work to overcome throughout the series . . .

. . . which kinds of bites us in the butt when a reader wants them to be perfectly capable from the beginning.

Yes, I'm serious. And these readers can get really mad! LOL.

It earned us a couple of scathing 1-star reviews about how Kate and Alisa are "the two stupidest women I have ever read about" and they "have the IQ of a stick."

Ouch!

Though I had to laugh that people get so intense about a book that's supposed to be something fun and entertaining.

Thankfully, many of you appreciate characters who develop throughout the series into heroines, instead of starting out that way.

Like these readers:

"Great female characters and honestly rather realistic. Love it."

"In order to survive they must fight to find the strength they will need, this is a great series and I am anxious to read the third book!"

What you may not know if an angry 1-star review takes four 5-star reviews to make up for it. (think how many A's in school it takes to make up for a single bad test score)

And since people are far more likely to complain than to compliment, it's even more than that.

So, do any of you want to inject a little positive into this series?

Counter the grumbling complainers!!

We'd love your reviews!

Review Deadly Lockdown and make Misty smile! :)
(On Amazon's page, just scroll down and look for a button that says "Write a Customer Review" to the left of the other reviews)

Thanks guys! You're the best!
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Misty's Writing Update:

My big writing news, as already mentioned, is Deadly Rescue coming out on the 19th.

And my awesome co-writer Steph has set up a bunch of promotion services who will send out a notice to their subscribers that Deadly Lockdown is on sale.

It's funny, but I never realized how much work all this marketing stuff was going to be when I started writing. But I should have expected as much, considering there are complete companies who specialize in advertising and marketing, LOL.

I am looking forward to putting that kind of author work behind me soon and digging back into creating fun worlds and adventures to share with you!

I appreciate your encouragement and support.

Enjoy reading this week!

— Misty :)
Misty Zaugg Website

Hi friends,

For those of my friends living in the states, isn't it nice to see little glimpses of spring? We had a beautiful, sunny day last week, warm enough to go out in t-shirts.

Neighbors emerged from homes like prisoners freed from jail. :D It was so fun to enjoy the beautiful outdoors after months of cold, huddling inside.

Of course, we immediately had a spat of dreary, cold and rainy days afterward, but we're hoping for more sun soon.

Last week, I got a great email from a reader, Patricia, in response to my email about making medicine kits. She mentioned how she makes a lot of her own herbal health remedies and uses those preferentially. Her favorite is elderberry syrup, which I also love! So, I thought I'd share some of the little I know about it.

Elderberry - A natural anti-viral!

This berry is small, purple and rather tasteless or bitter, if you try to eat it raw - exactly the kind of berries kids are warned not to eat in the wild.

And with good reason. Elderberry leaves and twigs, in particular, can actually be deadly and the raw berries can also be dangerous.

However, if you cook the juice extracted from the berries and don't get any twigs and leaves into your concoction, you'll have a pretty potent antiviral.

Here are the steps we go through to make elderberry juice from the bushes growing on either side of our house:

1. Pick the clusters of berries when they are purple and ripe in later summer/early fall. (You have to beat the birds)
2. Enlist friends or kids to help strip the berries from the twigs. We've found using a fork works well, or just fingers if you don't mind purple-stained skin.
3. Buy or borrow a boiling water steamer that extracts the hot juice from the berries, making it now safe to ingest. Without this piece of equipment, you can also cook the berries, smash them with a potato masher and put the hot slush in a few layers of cheesecloth to squeeze once it cools. Hot and messy, but no special equipment required.
4. Bottle the juice as is (requires a pressure canner), freeze it as ice cubes to add to drinks when someone is sick or cook up with sugar to make a syrup that you can then also bottle or keep in the fridge for quick use.

Of course, the beneficial properties of elderberries have become well known recently, and you can usually pick up a bottle of syrup or extract at the local drug store or online. Pricier, but much easier! :)

Have any of you used elderberry with good success? Made your own juice and/or syrup? I'd love to hear how it's worked for you.

Good luck and stay healthy out there!

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Misty's Writing Update:
I'm at the point in this HUGE book that I feel as if I'm constantly 5 - 10 chapters from the end.

I did wrap up the big battle, but now there are a bunch of plot threads that need tied off before the end. It seems that I keep remembering another one.

I'm currently deciding how much trouble I want the bully and other antagonists to cause for our main guy and his friends here at the end. I figure the good guys need a nice influx of loot and success, but nothing in a good story comes easily without opposition.

It is kind of fun though to play with the balance between rewards/achievements and tension/conflict as I finish this book.

If things go as planned, I'm hoping to finish up the first draft in another week, but tune in next time to see.

I just hit 160k words and with a regular paperback having 250 - 300 words per page, that makes this book between 540 and 640 pages long. I'm wondering exactly how much it'll cost to print this in paperback. Eeek!

Enjoy reading this week!

— Misty :)