Majanka Verstraete's Blog, page 9

Sims 4 Must-Have Mods for Storytellers: Go To School Mod

If you like storystelling using the medium of the Sims 4, like I do (check out my blogs here and here for ongoing stories), then you might need some mods to help you enhance your storytelling.

One of my recommended must-have mods for storytellers is the Go To School Mod by Zebru.

Since most of my stories involve young adult characters, I find it annoying that you cannot follow them to school, especially High School and Elementary School.

The Go to School Mod changes that, adding lots where you can place your school, and making it possible for you to follow your child or teen to go school and go through their day.

The Go To School Mod requires Get To Work Expansion to function.

What you can do with the Go To School Mod:

Go to school; follow your Sim to a lot where they can take classes, have lunch breaks, or even joint their fellow students for sports and other extracurricular activities.There are five subjects: Personal Development, Problem Solving, Creative Arts, Health & Fitness and Science & Technology.You have several “goals” that you should complete during the day. The goals changed over the course of the day, for example, there are seperate goals during lunch break.Surprise Guest Speakers from Careers (like Scientist, Doctor, Detective) can come visit the school and give lectures.The Mod adds two new venues: Elementary School and High School. For the MOd to work, you’ll need to place these lots somewhere in your game.You can find the venues on the gallery (just look for specific lots, and then ‘elementary school’ or ‘high school’ and you can find quite a few!)

 

Monday Musings #49

Monday Musings is a post in which I talk about my writing goals for the upcoming week, and the progress I made on my goals for the past week.

My list of monthly goals for January 2022 is here, in case you want to check out my insane list of goals for this month.

Here’s a rundown of my goals for this week.

Publish first 4 episodes of my Sims 4 story: Josie, The Vampire Slayer (0/4).Publish the first episode of my Sims 4 story: The Mystery of Blackwood Manor (0/1).Format and re-release Murder in Mind, the first book in my Psych-Tech Series .Send out my monthly newsletter.Schedule all articles in the category Urban Legends Investigated for on my blog this year (0/12).Schedule all articles in the category Real Haunted Houses for on my blog this year (0/12).Blog at least two times this week.

What are your goals for this week?

Monthly Goals January 2022

As I mentioned in my new year’s resolutions post yesterday, I’m looking for a fresh start. Last year was a bust in terms of writing, and I want to find my writing mojo again.

So let’s start this year off with some goals for January, and I’ll aim to finish them all. Fingers crossed.

Finish writing The Conclave of Fear, the fourth book in The Adventures of Marisol Holmes series, and provide this to my publisher.Format and re-release Murder in Mind, the first book in my Psych-Tech Series .Publish first 4 episodes of my Sims 4 story: Josie, The Vampire Slayer (vampires / romance).Publish the first episode of my Sims 4 story: The Mystery of Blackwood Manor (historical / vampires / romance)Send out my monthly newsletterEdit my YA paranormal romance / academy novel, Symphony of the Departed .Add Symphony of the Departed for pre-order on Amazon.Finish writing Academy of the Wicked: See All Evil , my NA reverse harem / dark fantasy novel.Re-publish Valentina’s Spooky Adventures on Amazon.Blog at least two times a week.

 

What are your writing goals for this month?

New Year’s Resolutions 2022

2021 seems to have disappeared in the blink of an eye. Or maybe even faster. One moment I was typing up my post with resolutions for 2021, and the next, I’m here, one year later.

Talking about those resolutions of last year… Let’s just forget about them, ‘mkay? Since I was notoriously bad at keeping up with them, and I basically failed at every single one of them. Shame on me.

But a new year, new resolutions, and it’s time to do better! Let’s not dwell on the past any longer and focus on my goals for 2022:

Draft one book per month. This includes re-drafting / re-writing books I have written in the past, so technically this should be doable – technically being the keyword.Write 2k per day, for at least 3 days a week. I want to avoid a hectic writing schedule and instead work on consistency.Write one short story a month. I love writing short sotries but never get around to them, so I want to make some time for them.Work on finalizing my current WIPs. I have a lot of books that are halfway finished that I need to finish and release, including (but by no means limited to, I have a lot of books in this category!): The Sleeping Kingdom, Symphony of the Departed, Allegro Academy #2 , extend Wicked Blood, A Monstruous Beauty, Princess of Dreams, Queen’s Fall, The Heir to Wonderland, The Revenant, The Monsters of Pandora , and more!
Release T he Conclave of Fear , the fourth book in The Adventures of Marisol Holmes Series.Write Angel Assassin , the third book in The Angel of Death Series, and the yet unnamed fourth book.Blog at least 2 times a week. I’ve been quite good so far and have already pre-scheduled some articles that I hope you’ll find interesting!Re-release Murder in Mind (my current publisher closed end of 2020). I have this planned for in January but I still have to do some last-minute formatting before I can re-release this.Write the sequel to Murder in Mind and release it.Keep this website updated with new and upcoming books.Write 2 more books in the Sally Sleuth Series and get them published.Write the first book in the YA warlock series I’m planning.Write the second book in the Blood Witch series (sequel to Wicked Blood ) and get it published.Re-release Valentina’s Spooky Adventures .

 

Apart from the writing-related goals, I also have some other goals:

Review more books on I Heart Reading (last year I barely reviewed any books, although I love reviewing!)Exercise consistently (at least 3 times a week).Meet my daily walking goal at least 5 times a week, starting as from January 3 (I am counting January 1 and 2 as relax-days).Focus more on healthy meals and home cooking.Release my story The Mystery of Blackwood Manor on the Sims 4.Release my new series Josie The Vampire Slayer on the Sims 4.Contiue working on our attic and turning it into a hobby room / den.Finish work on our exercise room (mostly painting, and decorating the room).Finish the diamond painting I received for Christmas as a gift.Work more on crafts: not just my diamond painting, but also the miniature houses I received over the years but did not finish.Be less stressed at work, and focus more on things that make me happy rather than stressed.Quality time with friends and family! This is my most important goal for the new year.

 

If you took a peek at last year’s goals and realized this year’s goals are almost 100% similar, well… I did not really cheat, since I still want to finish all these goals this year, but it just goes to show how bad I was last year at keeping track of my goals.

Anyway, I wish you all a wonderful and healthy 2022!

 

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Author Interview with Katie Mettner

Today I’m interviewing Katie Mettner, the author of contemporary romance “A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls”. Welcome to my blog, Katie!

What inspired you to start a writing career?

I never intended to have a writing career, if I’m honest. I’ve always loved to write, but just for fun. As a full-time mom, wife, and medical transcriptionist, I didn’t have a lot of extra minutes to write. After my below-knee amputation in February of 2011, that changed.

I was basically homebound for several months, so when I wasn’t typing medical reports, I was using the time to finally tell the story of Sugar DuBois, an amputee ballroom dance instructor who lost everything she loved one snowy night. When I finished the book, it was over 150,000 words and filled with grief, loss, love, hope, and a little bit of death and destruction thrown in to keep it interesting. I wanted to get copies of the book for my family, so I Googled, and this thing called KDP came up. I was like, “Okay, let’s do this!” I uploaded the book and went through the process, excited to get that Kindle version and paperback for my family. I didn’t know that I’d published the book to Amazon where other people could read it! I was thinking, “Well, now I have my copies and that’s the end of it.”

Then I started seeing sales, reviews, tweets, and emails, which were all a surprise to me. The bigger surprise was that readers loved Sugar and wanted more. I was thinking to myself at that point, “How much Sugar do you need? That book was 400 pages!” But, as it turned out, they needed a lot more. They got four Sugar books, a companion novel to the Sugar Series, and a spin-off series as well! So, while I never intended to start a writing career, the readers had other ideas. They wanted more books that featured characters with disabilities that were written in a real-life, accurate, and life affirming way. They were tired of the ‘disabled best friend’ trope or the main character with a disability who gets cured at the end of the book by love. We all know that’s not possible.

I published Sugar’s Dance ten years ago on Halloween and it has been a wild, wacky, and wonderful ride that has spanned so many personal changes in my own life, not to mention my growth as a writer over the fifty-one manuscripts I’ve finished. When readers ask me where they should start with my books, I always say Sugar’s Dance. Sugar’s story, in all its imperfections, is the perfect introduction to who I am as a writer, but more importantly, as a person. Life can be ugly and hard, but we can always find joy and hope shining somewhere for us to hold onto.

Is this book stand-alone, or part of a series?

A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls is a stand-alone novel. Though, I have already had requests for A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls 2, so you never know when I’ll be back spending time in Gingerbread Falls.

How does your book stand out from others?

I think Kirkus Reviews said it best when they said, “Mettner crafts two parallel, interdependent stories in a singular novel that’s ideal for those who can’t get enough of Hallmark movies come the holiday season.” Another reviewer said, “The movie storyline is rated G like a Hallmark movie and the real-life story is more PG13 like Lifetime. It was a good twist on the usual Christmas romcom.”

At first, you think you’re getting a typical Christmas romance novel, until the director yells Cut and you meet the actors behind the camera. Their story unfolds in real life just as the scripted story unfolds on camera. (The sections are well marked, so you’ll never be confused.) You get your classic, cheesy holiday movie fix along with a deeper, truer love affair between two people who, because of their pasts, don’t think they deserve the love of someone else. In the end, it will take a little bit of Christmas magic to convince them, but I trust Gingerbread Falls can bring that in a heaping cupful.

Are any of the situations / characters from your book based on real people or events?

The book was written for a small-town library writing contest two years ago. The town had gone through a tragedy, and they were looking for a little cheer with some fun stories they could post on their website for people to read. The contest ran in November, and I never stopped thinking about the story I’d written. I had the first 2,500 words, but I desperately wanted to finish the story. The problem was, I didn’t have a workable plotline to carry me through the rest of the book. It was a few weeks later when I was at my son’s Christmas concert in the same town. Singing next to him was my future ‘Carrie Murray.’ I don’t remember a thing from that concert other than how vividly the plot of the book snapped into focus. The real ‘Gingerbread Falls’ came through for me, and that night, I went home and scribbled out the whole book start to finish, so I didn’t forget a thing. A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls is proof that libraries not only make readers for life, but also writers. I was so thrilled to bring them a paperback copy of this book last week with a thank you for what they do for the community.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

I have two bits of advice that have served me well since I started writing.

Write every day. I don’t care if it’s a sentence written on a napkin on your lunchbreak. Write something every day. Sentences and paragraphs add up to pages and chapters and novels, take my word for it. If I have a busy day and can’t sit down and formally write something on my WIP, I will always write 500 words or so on my phone before bed. Google Docs is great for this, but even a note app works.I once had an author tell me, “A third of the people will love you, a third of the people will be indifferent to you, and a third of the people will hate you. Write to the third of the people who love you because nothing you do will sway the other two-thirds of the people.” I took that advice as, “stay on brand and true to your writing and your readers will follow. There will be bad reviews and there will be people who never even try your work, but as long as you keep giving the third of the people who love you what they want, you’ll always find success.” After nearly ten years of doing this, I can say without a doubt she was spot-on. To sum it up, love what you do, but remember that not everyone will love what you do. Don’t be discouraged by that third of the people. Find the ones who love you and you’ll find your tribe.About the Book Title: A Christmas at Gingerbread Falls

Author: Katie Mettner

Genre: Contemporary Romance / Christmas

Actress Carrie Murray’s films are a Christmas lover’s delight. Filled with twinkling lights, festive carols, and happy endings, they’re the perfect escape from reality. For her and the audience. Then Tinseltown calls.

Braxton Timothy is Hollywood’s biggest action star. Handsome and talented but decidedly on the naughty list, no one can fathom his sudden desire to produce a feel-good Christmas movie—least of all, his no-name co-star.

Alternating between scenes reminiscent of everyone’s favorite made-for-TV movies and unexpected, off-screen chemistry, Gingerbread Falls has surprises in store this holiday season. The question is, will there be enough Christmas magic to convince two imperfect people that they’re perfect for each other?

Author Bio Katie Mettner writes small-town romantic tales filled with epic love stories and happily-ever-afters. She proudly wears the title of, ‘the only person to lose her leg after falling down the bunny hill,’ and loves decorating her prosthetic with the latest fashion trends. She lives in Northern Wisconsin with her own happily-ever-after and three mini-mes. Katie has a massive addiction to coffee and Twitter, and a lessening aversion to Pinterest — now that she’s quit trying to make the things she pins.

 

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Book Trailer Blitz Healing Depression

About the Book

Title: Healing Depression

Author: C. Daley

Healing Depression is your go-to guide for dealing with a negative mindset and depression. Utilizing strategies designed to help readers shift their mindset and enjoy the benefits of mental and emotional wellbeing, this handbook arms readers with the knowledge they need to take charge of their own happiness and build a happier, healthier future.

By providing an in-depth and honest look at depression and the science behind it, along with an exploration of the common myths and misconceptions concerning these topics, readers will discover how to improve their lives: by setting obtainable goals, learning time management, and by preventing relapse using several tried and tested methods.

Healing Depression is a must read for anyone searching for a way to improve their mental health.

Buy the Book on Amazon

Author

Author C. Daley has battled with depression for many years. Through her battle with depression, she’s discovered a wealth of strategies for overcoming a negative mindset, maintaining emotional wellbeing, and learning to enjoy life. Now, she hopes to share her story with readers and to help other sufferers of depression reclaim control of their lives and build a happier future.

Website: CDPUBLISHING.NET

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Release Blitz The Captain’s Kidnapped Bride

The Captain’s Kidnapped Bride debuts October 1 at the discount price of 99c on Kindle (regular price $7.99)

About the Book

Title: The Captain’s Kidnapped Bride

Author: Abby Rice

Genre: Historical Romance

The last thing Hetty Pritchard ever wanted was a husband. Until a joke-gone-wrong lands her aboard an unfamiliar schooner headed for Jamaica — with the Captain himself snoring in the bunk beside her.

Now a ruined woman, Hetty has no choice but to accept the grouchy mariner’s reluctant solution: a temporary fake “marriage.” Purely for show, of course.

And if navigating a ship-full of men, pulling off a fake relationship with a total stranger, and making her way back home weren’t troubles enough? Add in troubling wisps of ‘second sight.’ And an unexpected simmering attraction to her new, fake husband.

A stand-alone sweet historical with touches of the paranormal, and a heart-tugging HEA ending.

Author Bio

Adventure really ought to be my middle name. I’ve ridden cross-country on a motorcycle; crewed on a real-life square-rigged ship; built and rehabbed houses/apartments; and helped seek justice for crime victims as a District Attorney.

Nonfiction is where I cut my writing teeth, in over 200 magazine stories. (As you probably guessed, natural health was one of my fave topics!) That led me into books. Take a peek at those and my rollicking history blog on www.Clairitage.com.

These days when I’m not dreaming up new stories about heroines, health, or history, I’m lending a hand to my garden-crazy husband, or scanning 1860s newspapers for bits of forgotten gossip.

Hope you’ll give Abby Rice a quick ‘like’ on Facebook! And follow me on Goodreads (under my non-pen name, Karen Dustman).

I love hearing from readers! If you’d like to connect, drop me an email at:

AbbyRiceRomance@gmail.com

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Release Blitz The Reality, Mythology and Fantasies of Unicorns

About the Book

Title: The Reality, Mythology and Fantasies of Unicorns

Author: W.B.J. Williams

Genre: Historical

The Hunt for a Unicorn.

The belief in unicorns as magical creatures is one that is rooted deeply in human history. They are featured in myths, legends, and folk tales from multiple cultures across the globe. In this volume, W.B.J. Williams, the author of the historical unicorn-themed fantasy “The Garden at the Roof of the World”, takes us on a journey through time to the dawn of civilization, for a fascinating take on the unicorn and its origins. Step into the worlds of magic, science, mythology, and the arts on your very own hunt for a unicorn.

Author Bio

W. B. J. Williams holds advanced degrees in anthropology and archeology. He is an avid historian, mystic, poet, and author who manages an information security program at a prominent New England start-up. He is noted for his bad puns, and willingness to argue from any perspective. He is endured by his beloved wife and two daughters, and lives in Sharon Massachusetts. When he is not at home or at his computer, he can often be found haunting the various used bookstores of Boston.

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Release Blitz Tall Willows

About the Book

Title: Tall Willows

Author: PC Feather

Genre: Murder Mystery / Romance

For senior Ruth Willows, her last year at Golden Valley High School in Golden Valley, Colorado was to be the best year ever. That is until the drop-dead sexy cowboy love-of-her-life Ken Silver turns out to be the school’s new English teacher. When she sees him at school, she faints from the shock, crashes into a bookcase, and goes to the ER. Ken, realizing his terrible conflict of interest, goes to the ER and tells her he cannot see her anymore.

Ruth returns to school, injured, mortified, and heart broken only to discover the district accountant shot dead in the school darkroom. If that weren’t enough, she accidentally picks up a file that the late administrator left in the school office before his death. The file contains proof that someone was embezzling funds from the school.

Ruth finds herself in the middle of the mystery. Was the administrator killed by the embezzler? Does the embezzler know this file exists? Could the murder be a coincidence?

Tall Willows takes you to beautiful horse farms in the fictional small town of Golden Valley, Colorado, back to high school and first love, and into the mind of a crazed murderer. If you love a good mystery with a steamy side of forbidden romance, you’ll love Tall Willows.

About the Author

PC Feather feels blessed. She has lived and traveled from Maine to California. She’s had the opportunity to work many many jobs from Actor to Zookeeper. Currently, PC Feather lives in Monmouth County, New Jersey where she cares for sport horses, shows horses in dressage, and is a certified equine massage therapist.

Links

Book Site:  www.tallwillows.com

Author Site: www.pcfeather.com

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/pcfeatherstories

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/pcfeather/

Purchase Tall Willows from Amazon.