Misty Zaugg's Blog - Posts Tagged "optimism"

Hi friends,

I hope everyone is doing well during the holiday season! Best wishes from me and my family! <3

Speaking of family, my 5-year-old is basically a teenager in training with all her siblings much older than her, but one thing I love about her is her unshakeable confidence in her abilities.

It's a good reminder to us adults to not to sabotage our dreams with pessimism before we even get started.

A little peek into our home:

One evening I noticed my 12-year-old working on his digital drawing for his scratch.mit.edu programming channel. I wanted to encourage him with his art . . . and plant a few seeds for him to get good enough at it to do covers for me in the future - see how sneaky I am? :D

Me - "Hey, take a look at these awesome, illustrated book covers I've seen in the litrpg genre lately."

I proceed to show him a handful of epic covers on Amazon with characters that look ready to pop off the computer screen.

12 yo son: "Wow! Those are cool. I can't draw that well yet, though."

Me: "Keep practicing, and you can easily get that good. Then you can do book covers for me."

5-yead-old daughter (shamelessly eavesdropping): "Oh, I can do a book cover like that for you right now. Easy."

We both turn and stare at her, surprised and speechless.

She shrugs with a no-big-deal expression. "I just need some paper, and I can do it tonight."

My son opens his mouth to object, and I give him a nudge to interrupt him, so he doesn't rain on her parade.

Me: "Great! I'd love to see what you come up with."

She rushes off, on a mission now. Noises ensure in the other room. A muffled conversation with Dad. The whirr of the printer. Little feet running up the stairs, back down and then back up again.

An hour or two later, after . . .
• a request to dad to "Print me a magic book cover I can trace."
• a handful of the aforementioned blank paper.
• the use of her brother's LED tracing screen
• a liberal application of bright crayons
• and the confidence of a child who doesn't even consider she might fail.

She presents me with my newest book cover:



Pretty decent for a kid who traced and colored that on her own. She's now planning how she'll make all my book covers when she grows up. You'll have to check back with me in a decade or two and see how it turns out. :D

It's a nice reminder that the next time a task seems overwhelming or impossible, if my 5-year-old can design a book cover, what could we achieve if we had that kind of confidence and drive?

I hope you and your family enjoying the holiday season!

______________________
Misty's Writing Update:

One of the most fun parts of the creative process is brainstorming new ideas.

Through the wonders of Zoom (which I'd never heard of before 2020 - lol), Steph and I were able to spend a few hours together this week throwing ideas back and forth for the final three books in our storm series.

For those interested in the process, we generally start with the overall theme of each book, what the climactic battle will be and where our main characters will start and finish.

What's fun about outlining the broad strokes of three books all at once is we can sketch out a overarching plot lines that will develop over three books and come to a satisfying conclusion in the final book.

Once the broad outline was done on our first day of zooming, we sketched out what would happen in each of the chapters of book 4 on the second day. As usual, we probably crammed a bit too much action happening in each chapter, but our readers enjoy long books, so it's all good.

We hope you'll enjoy this series as much as we have enjoyed writing it when it releases next year!

Happy reading this week,

— Misty :)
Misty Zaugg Website

Hi friends,

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate it! <3 I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy time with family . . . even if it's via Zoom! :D

Do you have fun family traditions that you enjoy every year and are still able to do this year?

Here's one of ours:

Gingerbread Houses!



Ok, we cheated a little this year, going the "Graham Crackers" and "Store Frosting" route, but I generally only summon up the energy to bake real gingerbread once or twice a decade.

Since the candy is the real focus and the family spending an hour playing and chatting as they build, I call it a win.

What about you? I'd love to hear of ways you're still keeping holiday traditions in this crazy year.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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Misty's Writing Update:

Vacation Time!!

Steph and I are taking some time off to enjoy the holidays with our family. Yay!

. . . though some ideas keep cropping up in my mind and I might be jotting them down occasionally. :D

We did a final push last week and sent the final version of Storm Book #1 to our publisher, Book #2 to their beta readers and Book #3 to the editor.

We'll be writing Book #4 when the new year starts.

Thanks for following along on the ride and we hope you love the books once they finally hit the e-shelves!

Merry Christmas and enjoy reading during the holidays!

— Misty :)
Misty Zaugg Website

Hi friends,

Wow! 2021 is here!

Like many of you, I'm excited to see what positives will come our way this year.

Since this is the time of year many people make goals and new resolutions, I thought it would be fun to do one Apocalypse style - if society ever were to actually break down.

Apocalypse New Year's Resolutions

• Bite your tongue and don't say "I told you so," when your friends complain that the stores are out of basic supplies again. (Grab some extra toilet paper, hand sanitizer and yeast, yourself, next time they're back in stock.)

• Pull the trigger on purchasing that farmstead in Idaho, far from large cities, on fifty acres, with a stream running through it, a forest full of deer nearby and a small orchard of mature fruit trees.
• Finally build a faraday cage in the basement and stock it with a extra electronic items, a laptop, walkie talkies, flashlights, radios, cell phones loaded with detailed survival info pdfs, music and entertainment to stay sane, etc.
• Pull out the 72-hr backpacks you made ten years ago and switch out the diapers and baby clothes for things more appropriate for your teenagers (this one might apply to me - lol)
• Read more post-apoc fiction so you can enjoy someone else doing all the stuff you haven't quite gotten around to doing! :D

What about you? Any new goals this year to be a little more prepared, now that we've learned to weather a global pandemic?

I wish you all a very happy New Year!

All the best,

-- Misty :)

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Misty's Writing Update:
Business stuff time!

We're about ready to start on the fourth book in our Storm series, but are trying to finish up all of the small author chores that seem to accumulate and interfere with the fun of diving into a new book.

A sample of our to-do list:
• Write up briefs for cover artists who are designing the covers for our upcoming books
• Pick titles for all the books.
• Write catchy blurbs for each book that will go on the back covers and the Amazon sales page.
• Reply to early readers who have been generously going over our new books.
• Go through and fix the edits that come back from the editor.
• Make a new website for the two of us
• Write up a welcome email for new readers who will sign-up for the free prequel to our new series (don't worry - you guys will hear about it first when it's ready!)
• Set up the system to make a combined email program for the two of us.
• Figure out business and bookkeeping technicalities of working with a co-author.
• Write the front and back matter of the books, including links for the freebies we'll be offering . . . oh - go and set up those links . . . wait - we need the covers for that and a file to upload . . . ask the cover designer to add the words: "Bonus Chapters" to some of the covers he did . . . etc. LOL
• It never stops! :D

So, we'll do a bunch of them and then probably procrastinate the rest so we can both get back to what we love the most . . . creating new worlds and exciting stories to share with you!

Happy New Year and enjoy reading this week!

— Misty :)
Misty Zaugg Website
p.s. Thanks for clicking on the promoted books up above. It really helps!