Alicia Justice's Blog, page 8

Hello, February 2022! Writing Goals

It’s already February….What? (I know it’s already the 7th and this is a bit late, but life happens right?) What happened to January? Oh, that’s right it was filled with me getting ready/set up for the release of First to Fight! That’s why it felt like the whole month just flew by. LOL

I have several things that are in the works for this month and I wanted to jump on here and share with you all what my plans are. This way it might help me be a little more accountable.

So right now, I’m in the middle of working on the second draft of Second to Fall, the second book in the First to Fight series. Of which, was just released last Wednesday on the 26th of Jan. If you don’t have your copy yet…what are you waiting for? Don’t forget it, First to Fight is available on Kindle Unlimited as well. Back to my goals for February.

My large tasks/goals are as follows for this month.

Finish second draft of Second to Fall.Format the paperback edition of First to Fight and release it!Celebrate the paperback release.Go through Second to Fall two more times and check for any mistakes. Get it ready for my editor.Contact editor and set up time to send her Second to Fall.Schedule the cover reveal for Second to Fall.Contact The Blurb Doctor to get blurb for Second to Fall…yep you read that right. I’m terrible at writing blurbs and she’s amazing! Enough said.

That is the list of must-dos for February! This list is huge. I can’t believe I’m already getting the second book ready for you all when I just released First to Fight. That’s called Rapid releasing and that is the plan. The life of an indie author is always go go go, I’m kind of figuring that out. Not that I’m complaining, this is a huge dream of mine and I’m now getting to live it!

So, what are your plans, tasks, goals for February? Are you an author with a huge to-do list like me? Or just have a huge to-do list? You could always head over to Twitch on Wednesdays, Fridays, and sometimes Saturdays and do productivity sprints live with me. It’s a great way to get a lot of your to-do items off your list.

Anyway, that is my plan for the month of February? Let me know in the comments what your plans are for the month. I would love to know and connect with you.

First to Fight: All About Release Day

I still can’t believe First to Fight is available now on Amazon! It’s a weird feeling honestly, to see it there and realize that people are now reading it. Don’t get me wrong it’s an amazing feeling, but it’s hard to explain after all that time working on it, it’s crazy to think that…well I did it! The book is out there in the hands of others.

Release Day

Release day didn’t really go as planned, but what in life really ever does? I did have a good release day for First to Fight and I honestly enjoyed it. I also learned a lot that day and that’s always a good thing. I ended my day with chocolate cake and ice cream to celebrate, thanks to my amazing mom! Who doesn’t have a good day when you have cake and ice cream

All in all the day was good. The ebook of First to Fight is out there in the world and I’m super excited about that. Now I just have a million more other things that I need to do to get the next book ready. The ever-growing to-do list never stops growing.

About First to Fight [image error]

Now Available on Amazon: CLICK HERE

It is also available through Kindle Unlimited!!!

He fought for our freedom. Will he show the same resolve pursuing the love he desires?

Leaving the military portion of his life behind, Collin Porter is struggling to adjust to life as a civilian. While focused on opening a bar of his own, falling in love was the farthest thing from Collin’s mind. Yet the second he saw Rachel, he was a goner. That made it all the more painful when she smiled and strode right into the arms of his best friend.

Just as her circumstances change and hope builds that the two may have a chance together, a face from Collin’s past reappears with a shocking revelation that will turn his world upside down. The Marine way is to make things work, even as circumstances change. Now, more than ever, Collin has something of his own to fight for.

Are you ready to meet Collin and Rachel?

Please Leave a Review

I hope you enjoy First to Fight! I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it. It stands at almost 96 thousand words. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review for it on Goodreads, Amazon, or anywhere you post reviews! I really appreciate it. This is just the beginning for these characters and I can’t wait to see how everything turns out for each and every one of them. I still can’t believe this is my life.

I hope you all have a good day!

First to Fight Release Day Party

Hey everyone! I wanted to jump on here real quick and let you all know that I’m going to be hosting a release day party on my Twitch stream. On the 26th of this month, I’ll be doing a stream on Twitch, where I’ll be giving away a few ebook copies of First to Fight, as well as playing a bunch of games, a live Q&A, and a bunch more.

I’m super excited to celebrate the release of First to Fight with you all, so make sure you head over to Twitch at 4 PM EST. I’ll be on for a few hours! I can’t believe that’s only in 5 days!

Anyway, I hope to see you all there. Remember it’s Jan 26th at 4 PM EST!!

My Twitch channel: CLICK HERE

My 2022 Writing/Author Goals (First Part of the Year!)

My goals this year are a lot different than they were this time last year. Last year I hadn’t really made my mind up on what I wanted to do with First to Fight. I hadn’t pushed myself to actually go for it. This year, I’m there. I know exactly what’s going to happen in 15 days. I know that I’m almost finished with my round of edits for the second book in the series.

So with all of that being said, my goals for 2022 are as follows:

Get books 2 and 3 to the places they need to be to publish. Publish book 2 in May and publish book 3 by end of 2022. Grow my author community! Show my kids that they should always reach for their dreams. Set up my Patreon and my Discord server.

I didn’t want to set up too many goals this year, so I’m going to start with these and go from there. I will have another post with other goals toward the middle of the year. So this is where I’m going to start!

What are your goals for the year? Do you make small goals or really large ones?

I’m on Twitch!!

Hey everyone, I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted, but it’s been a bit crazy lately. With the release day of First to Fight so close and everything else going on, I just haven’t had much time to do anything lately. I’m here today though to let you all know some awesome news! I’m on Twitch now…yep you heard me correct I’m now a streamer over on Twitch.

I try to stream at least three times a week. Wednesdays and Fridays are the two days that I have scheduled to stream, but I have been adding another day as well. Mostly Saturdays or Mondays. I usually stream pretty late, but I’m going to attempt to stream more as time goes. During my streams, I’ve been live writing and live editing the First to Fight series.

I would love to have you in my Twitch family, so please come over and follow me or come watch my live streams and chat with me. You can find me by CLICKING HERE! I’m really trying to get to 50 followers right now.

I hope you will come to check out some of my streams, we’ve been having a great time chatting about my series, plotting, and editing. It’s been a great time!

First to Fight Pre-Order Giveaway

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We had a great Christmas, spent the day with my kiddos and my parents. Great food and great company, overall it was a fantastic Christmas. With all of that said, I wanted to let you all know about a giveaway I have going right now.

This giveaway is for anyone who pre-orders First to Fight! I’m giving away a $25 dollar gift card to Amazon. So if you have or do Pre-order First to Fight before its release you are eligible to win. To enter all you have to do is fill out a form (link below), show proof that you pre-ordered my book. It’s pretty simple.

Oh, and you can’t pre-order the book, enter the giveaway and then cancel the pre-order. I’ll know if you do that! The giveaway will end on Jan. 26th and I’ll pick a winner that day! I’ll contact the winner by email.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year, wanted to say that real quick seeing as this will be my last post of the year. The new year and the release of First to Fight is almost here!

CLICK HERE To Enter The Giveaway

ARC Team Opening

Hey everyone! I wanted to jump on here and post a quick blog post letting you all know that I have a few open spots on my ARC team that I’m currently looking to fill. I have five spots open at this time and would like to have them filled ASAP.

For those of you that don’t know what an ARC team is, it’s a select few people who will be available to read my upcoming release before anyone else and is willing to review it on Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram, and even their own blog (If they have one).

This team will get an ebook/pdf copy of First to Fight within a few weeks and I would discuss other important information about what I’m needing as soon as I have the team in place.

If you would like to either know more or join my ARC team please fill out this form: CLICK HERE!

Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to help!

Post NaNoWriMo Update 2021

Awe this is the last NaNoWriMo journal update for the year. Not sure if I’m sad about that or happy. Yep, that was me being totally sarcastic. Anyway, I wanted to do a small update and recap/end NaNoWriMo for the year here on the blog.

This year has been a whirlwind of a year for me, NaNoWriMo included in that. So let’s chat about NaNoWriMo and then we can chat about what has happened since I finished!

NaNoWriMo 2021

As you probably already know, I did complete/win NaNo this year. Now I was a total NaNo Rebel this year and worked on the second book in my series that I had already worked on the previous year for NaNo. Right now the draft sits just over 100,000 words. It’s actually at 104,698 words. The plan is to get it to about 130,000. Not sure if that will happen, but that’s the goal.

I’m actually really happy with the way this book is going and can’t wait to see how it all turns out once I’m finished drafting and self-editing. In the past I’ve hated the first draft of my books, but for this one that isn’t the case. I guess that’s because this story has been in my head for years and I’m able to just flow right through it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have any problems while writing it though. I did have to sit down with my Alpha reader (my amazing mom) and chat about a few things, but all in all, I love it so far.

After NaNoWriMo 2021

Now after I finished NaNo this year I needed a break, so that’s what I did. I finished NaNo the third week of the month and for the next two weeks, I took a break. I took time to read and time for myself. Something I really didn’t do while I was getting those words down during NaNo. Now the plan is to pick it all backup and get back to work.

First I’m going to finish the first draft and put that THE END on the bottom of the document. I’m actually pretty close. Right now I’ve got four more chapters to write and it should be finished. Totally crossing my fingers here, if it goes like First to Fight did, I’ll end up adding at least two more chapters after the four. We shall see what happens.

Of course, after finishing the first draft, I’ll let it sit for a few weeks while I work on revisions and formating the first book in the series. Since the plan is still to have it released at the end of January so I have some major work to finish there.

All in all, it’s been a great year and a fantastic NaNoWriMo for me. I hope you all had a great NaNo and for those of you that didn’t complete/win, remember you got words down that’s all that matters, and if you didn’t you at least tried. Honestly, my take on that is if you got even one word down, you’re still a winner. NaNoWriMo is hard! I enjoy the push, the thrill of trying to hit that goal every single day. Can’t wait to do it again next year.

NaNoWriMo Journal: Top 5 Things I Learned This Year

As you can see from the title, I indeed did complete NaNoWriMo this year and won. I’m no where near finished with the first draft of First to Fight though, I still have about another 30k to write. Which honestly isn’t really that much, if I’m thinking about it!

What I Learned This Year from Participating in NaNoWriMo

I learned a few things this year and I’m hoping I can remember them for next year! So I wanted to share those things with all of you, in hopes that it might help you as well.

Start that first day with a big number: Make sure you write as much as I possibly can that first day. I started my NaNo month off with a bang and wrote 10k that first day. That helped me so much. Gave me that boost seeing that huge number every time I looked at my total. Don’t try to write during the day if you know you’re more creative at night: Know what time of day you’re more creative. I learned I’m a huge night time writer, I’m more creative at night. So I learned to really use that to my advantage and get everything else completed during the day that I needed to get done. That way I was free to just sit down and write when night came. Sprints! Sprints! Let me say it again…Sprints! Sprints are a total live saver for me. Writing for 25 minutes and then taking a break for 5 or even 10 minutes is an amazing way to get the words down. Best thing is during NaNo there are tons of people sprinting on Youtube and Twitch. Writing with other people is also a huge advantage! YOU CAN DO THIS! I’ve won NaNoWriMo now several times and every year I’m not sure if I can actually win. I need and want to remind myself that I can sit down and get those words in. Because guess what I’ve done it now several times so I can do it again!Prizes and Taking the Pressure out of it: The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to get people to write. It doesn’t really matter if I win as long as I sat down and wrote the words. Yes I love my prizes and I love that I won. But in the end, I was honestly happy just to get the words in and write the story.

So there you have it, the top 5 things I learned this year participating and winning NaNo! I know a bunch of you are still writing away and getting those words in for the last couple days of the month. Remember you can do this!!! I’m here cheering you all on.

Now I just have to keep going and finish this first draft! I better get to it.

First to Fight Blurb Reveal!

It’s time to finally reveal the blurb/summary for First to Fight and I’m over the moon to share it with all of you! I’m not even going to draw this out and make it a very long post, I just want to share the blurb with you. So here it is.

I hope you all love it as much as I do! If you do, head over to Amazon and Pre-order your copy today. Soon I’ll be announcing the actual release date! So if you’re not a subscriber to my newsletter make sure you do that as well, I’ll be announcing that through that.