Beth Alvarez's Blog, page 18

Tea review: Adagio Cream

It feels like I’m running behind on everything, lately, so it’s not much of a surprise that I haven’t had time to sit and savor a cup of new tea for a while. As a result, I’m still working my way through some I got last year and still haven’t tried. This was one of them–Adagio’s cream tea.

I’ve noticed a lot of blends I’ve gotten use this tea as one of the elements. It’s pretty simple; black tea with added cream flavoring. It’s sweeter than plain black tea, but it’s understated, and the flavor of cream turns out not to mean much without the weight of actual cream in the drink.

It was pleasant enough to drink it straight, but it wasn’t particularly noteworthy with sugar or milk added. My daughter enjoyed it enough that we had a nice tea party using my Sailor Moon cups she’s in love with. I could see it being a pleasant enough replacement for black teas when you want something sweeter, but mostly, I came to understand the virtue of it as a base for custom blends. It wasn’t bad, but as I sipped, I found myself daydreaming about how good it would be if I mixed it with a berry herbal blend I have hidden away in my cabinet. With that in mind, I understand why it’s so popular as a part of fandom blends.

Next time, I’ll add a bit of that berry herbal and see what happens. I suspect it’ll be something good.

I tried NaNoWriMo in February–here’s how it went.

Spectrum Blade was supposed to be done at the end of 2020. For reasons you probably don’t have to guess at, the biggest of which being… well, 2020, that didn’t happen. Then I’d wanted to finish it in January, but January needed to be spent preparing for the release of Serpent’s Crown, so once again, writing got pushed back.

Somewhere along the line, I decided that what I needed was a big push, so I decided to aim for 50,000 words in the month of February–the first chance I’d have to focus on writing again. February 50 sounded nice. It also sounded doable, presuming I was able to clear my calendar first. I planned to do all my video filming ahead of time, so I wouldn’t have any other work scheduled and I could focus solely on writing.

The fact I wasn’t able to clear my calendar before February started is a pretty good indicator of how things turned out.

WEEK ONE

Things started off pretty good. I’d hoped to work on Spectrum Blade the whole month, but I needed to complete a short I’d started for my Snakesblood Saga universe. For the first few days, I split my focus between the short and Spectrum, then switched to working on Spectrum exclusively once the short was done.  Unfortunately, I quickly ran into some problems. I’d veered off the outline pretty well when doing NaNoWriMo back in November, and needed to figure out why things weren’t working out as I worked to get back on track. On top of that, this was the week I launched some heavy promotional and advertising stuff, and it ended up needing a lot more attention than I anticipated.

Week one word counts:
1: 2252
2: 2026
3: 884
4: 1538
5: 441
6: 0
7: 0

WEEK TWO

Week two was the one that did me on. On top of juggling the promo stuff that started in week one, I was trying to sort out my outline and get the whole story back on track–which meant abandoning a few elements I’d planned to include, which meant rewriting how several things would pan out later in the story. Lots of zero days. Week two was pretty bad.

Week two word counts:
8:  485
9: 1159
10: 685
11: 0
12: 0
13: 0
14: 0

WEEK THREE

The week that I tried to get things back on target. My schedule was finally mostly clear–I’d caught up on stuff left undone from January, we were snowed in, and I was able to sit down with a revised outline and get to work. For the first time in a year, I had a week that gave me my “normal” word counts… the kind I got before virtual school and trying to cram everything I have to do into a tiny window of time in the evening. Unfortunately, the increased amount of time at a screen was obviously something my body needs time to readjust to, because by Friday I was fighting off a migraine. Working slower on the weekend got me some high word counts still, but I could tell from hovering on the fringe of that headache all weekend that I was probably going to crash.

Week three word counts:
15: 3313
16: 3517
17: 3390
18: 3356
19: 1318
20: 3227
21: 2120

WEEK FOUR

The last week of February, I sat down to look at my outline and my word counts and I knew I wasn’t going to make it to 50k. I was still down by 20 and wrestling with a headache that wouldn’t leave me alone. On top of that, I was just plain tired, and there was no way I was going to get even close to ending the book, either. I’d originally planned for Spectrum Blade to be around 90,000 words long, and by this point, it became clear the book would be at least 120,000. That’s great, since it’s epic fantasy, but it also means it’ll take a lot longer to write.

Week four word counts:
22: 602
23: 1052
24: 784
25: 859
26: 798
27: 886
28: 0

Total words written in February: 34,692

END THOUGHTS

For where I am in life, it’s obvious 50,000 words was too ambitious. I probably could have made it to 40k if the month had 30-31 days, but it didn’t, so I didn’t, so oh well. Spectrum Blade is just shy of 85,000 words long now, and it’s most likely going to need another 50k to finish what I’ve started. So the amount of time needed to write the first draft, edit, polish, and get the book ready for publication will all be substantially longer than anticipated.

Based on all that, I don’t think I’m going to make my original goal of publishing the book in August. I still aim to get it out this year, but it’ll probably be somewhere in Q4 instead of Q3, and that changes all my publishing plans for the next several years. I’d hoped to settle into a comfortable rhythm of publishing four books a year, but it looks like it’ll be 3 this year and probably 3 next year, as well, but maybe if I’m lucky, things will be closer to what normal used to be when we get to next spring. Maybe next year, I can try my February 50 again.

Keeper’s Kin is now a digital box set

Early last month, I scraped together enough time to knock out another goal: The three core books in the Keeper’s Kin series are now available bundled together as a digital box set.

The set includes Her Midnight Cowboy, Her Midnight Wedding, and Her Midnight Hunter. If you’ve read these books before, there’s nothing new for you to see here, but you’re still welcome to ogle the way the digital box set looks now that the series is all together!

Much as I’d love to offer a print edition with a slip case like this, it’s not possible right now.

Like the individual ebooks, this is available through most major ebook retailers.

Click here to find your retailer of choice and check it out.

I’ll be back next week with updates on how my writing’s been going.

Serpent’s Crown, Book 5 of the Snakesblood Saga, is now available

It’s been a long month, but we’re finally there!

Serpent’s Crown is available now.

If you preordered, it’s in your library now! Otherwise, you can get your ebook copy now by following this link, or request an author-signed paperback by filling out this form.

In just a few more months, the series will conclude. In the meantime, here’s a refresher, if you missed what this one is all about…

The Archmage will not be denied, and neither will the crown.

The alliance Firal forged with the Triad brought stability to Elenhiise, but peace cannot last while her mother still lives. Now, with Envesi’s return to the island, the life of Firal’s child hangs in the balance—and the only thing that can save her is a free mage.

When Rune is forced to return from exile, he’s told there are only two possible outcomes—he must face the corrupted Archmage and save the queen’s daughter, or else hang for the murder of the Eldani king. But Elenhiise is his homeland, and the ties he still carries present a third option: seize the crown that should have been his.

As whispers of sedition begin to take root, Firal struggles to maintain control of the island and its mages as she searches for her stolen child… and for traitors in her own court.

The Snakesblood Saga will conclude in May!

Fear of falling behind

If there’s one thing I learned over the course of 2020, it’s that I’m really good at putting too much on my plate, Figuratively, I mean–when it comes to food, I’m pretty good at portion control, unless it’s flautas or my mom’s recipe for homemade chicken noodles. With those, I inevitably give myself a tummy ache. When it comes to work, though, it’s a headache, and it’s basically all the time.

Since I founded my own publishing company and became my own boss, a lot of my deadlines are self-imposed, but they’re still deadlines I set in stone every time I put a book up for preorder. I don’t want to miss that kind of deadline, and I haven’t yet, though I’ve had to push back a couple intended release dates as I struggle to navigate a sluggish publishing field where printers are regularly behind on production schedules and you never know how long it will take for a proof copy to make it into your hands. I went from publishing once a month in early 2020 to publishing every other month, then every 3 months toward the end of the year. But even every 3 months is 4 books a year, which is a hard pace to keep up when you only have an hour or two a day that you can work on… well, anything.

Keeping up is hard, but the fear of falling behind is horrible. It’s a struggle that exists even when I’m the one setting the deadlines, and it’s especially frustrating when I know that if everything were normal, I’d have no difficulty keeping up with my plan to publish 4 books a year. Two of this year’s releases were already written, after all, and I want Spectrum Blade to land in Q3. That’s a faster turnaround than what I’ve previously had on books, though, and even though there’s a pretty hefty gap between now and then, the difficulties and roadblocks I ran into last year linger in the back of my head, making me question whether or not I can do it.

I suppose should it come to it, I can always push Spectrum back and aim for September/October instead of August, but that pushes the second book in the series (which I also hope to write and release this year) back to 2022, and then it starts making all my publishing plans a little wonky. Slow, but steady, I suppose, and maybe dropping to 3 books a year wouldn’t be horrible. Still, it’s hard not to feel like it’s a little bit of a letdown to even have those thoughts springing up when I’m still in the very beginning of 2021’s publishing plans.

Serpent’s Crown will still be released this weekend, and the final book in the Snakesblood Saga is still right on schedule for its release in May, so nothing is changing early on. Then again, I guess one advantage of being in charge of all my own release dates is having the flexibility to change things, right?

Either way, it’s been a month of progress, and I’ll pop in next week to tell you all about how a month of writing Spectrum Blade turned out.

Playing with book spreads

I can’t be the only one who sees books laid out all aesthetically on Instagram and wants that for my books, too.

Well, if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself, right?

I spent some time playing with book layouts and spreads for Instagram, using some stuff I was reading, and discovering that photographing a tablet or phone (when most of your reading is ebooks, these days) has a whole lot of challenges.

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Definitely tough. Generally okay, but also lacking anything to make it really pop or stand out as uniquely mine.

My own books had the same issues. Trouble photographing tablets. Trouble making it stand out.

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But then, while cleaning out a drawer in my studio desk to make room for new ribbon and sewing trim,  I had a whole stack of interesting papers left over from planner customization projects. If I could just combine those with a few things to add some extra visual interest…

Eventually, I decided to try a handful of things that I felt suited me. Trinkets I liked, that would add a little bit of myself to the image, aside from the fact the books I wrote were front and center. I set up better lighting, and used paper to make backdrops. I scattered my collection of keys and some of my dice around the books, my Nook, or the little Cruz tablet I use for an ereader. I was still missing some things that would help cement the notion of fantasy, though. What better for that than some crowns and a knife?

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Finally! Progress. I added the custom mug my sister had made for me (which I LOVE) and finally, it started to seem like things were coming together.

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I’m still working on getting everything just right, but it’s a definite improvement, wouldn’t you say?

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And of course, if you want to see more of these images, you can always check out my author Instagram! Between these and my favorite lines from my books, I’ve got something going up every few days…

Renewing NaNo efforts

Though I made a lot of progress during NaNoWriMo back in November, I didn’t finish the book. I didn’t even come close. I told my sister I’d need to do a second NaNo to be able to finish the story, and even that would be questionable. But when was I supposed to find the time?

Over the course of December, I played with the idea of doing another month of hard writing pushes that would get me closer to finishing the book. But January would be devoted to finishing edits on Serpent’s Crown, so that was off the table. The first half of the month was going to be way too busy.

What about February, though? Could I aim to write 50,000 words in February, getting me closer to having the first draft of Spectrum Blade ready to roll? The required daily word count would be a little bit higher than it would be during a longer month, but not high enough that it would be impossible to manage.

But there were a few things in the way. For one, the fact I still try to share videos on YouTube every weekend, so that would be something I’d have to clear from my table if I was going to write 2k words a day for the whole month. It’s a very doable word count for me, but it’s about 1.5-2 hours of work, and that’s the absolute limit of work time I have.

The solution?

Filming a month’s worth of content ahead of time.

January ended up being pretty frenetic, with a lot of projects crammed into the last two weeks while I prepared for my own personal NaNo round 2, ensuring I’d have content to clean up and share through the whole month. I didn’t quite make it, but I got enough made that I could mostly focus on writing, sparing just a day or two each week to preparing videos for release on the weekends.

And how’s it going otherwise?

Well, it’s going. I’ll give a full run-down of my progress at the end of the month, but in the meantime, you can see my weekly progress updates on my author Facebook or Instagram pages.

Here’s to a productive writing month!

Cover Reveal: Serpent’s Crown, Book 5 in the Snakesblood Saga

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? At the end of this month, the Snakesblood Saga continues with book 5, Serpent’s Crown.

As usual, there are spoilers in the description underneath the image… but for now, have a look at the cover! And read on, if you’re ready…

The Archmage will not be denied, and neither will the crown.

The alliance Firal forged with the Triad brought stability to Elenhiise, but peace cannot last while her mother still lives. Now, with Envesi’s return to the island, the life of Firal’s child hangs in the balance—and the only thing that can save her is a free mage.

When Rune is forced to return from exile, he’s told there are only two possible outcomes—he must face the corrupted Archmage and save the queen’s daughter, or else hang for the murder of the Eldani king. But Elenhiise is his homeland, and the ties he still carries present a third option: seize the crown that should have been his.

As whispers of sedition begin to take root, Firal struggles to maintain control of the island and its mages as she searches for her stolen child… and for traitors in her own court.

The Snakesblood Saga continues with book 5, Serpent’s Crown, on February 27.

You can preorder your ebook copy now by following this link, or request an author-signed paperback by filling out this form.

We’re so close to the end of the series, now. Are you ready for what comes next?

Tea review: Adagio Zodiac blends Aquarius

So this pretty little tin was a nice treat, a special mix for my birth month, offered free with my order. I’m usually pretty ambivalent toward zodiac stuff, because I don’t really buy into astrology, and on top of that, anything Aquarius usually doesn’t suit me at all. Love the aesthetic of constellations, meh about all the astrology that goes with it. But today’s my birthday, so it seemed like a good idea to share it today.

So I wasn’t sure I’d like this tea, since I usually don’t like Aquarius stuff. But the list of ingredients, with hazelnut and vanilla, cocoa nibs and cornflowers, seemed intriguing.

The mellow, warm, and grounding nuttiness of this tea was a delight and I liked it plain a lot more than I expected I would. The hazelnut and cocoa flavors dominate when served black, while sugar and milk makes the cocoa and vanilla flavors a little more pronounced. It was a surprisingly earthhy blend and not at all what I would have expected for the usual Aquarius aesthetic, but I found it extremely enjoyable, especially on the chilly, rainy day I chose as a time to sample this tea.

This one’s definitely a keeper, so I’m glad I’ve got a nice little tin of it to last me through the rest of the winter months.
Plus, it’s pretty, and who doesn’t like that?

Art Break: Chibi Tahl

Nothing too special to share this week–I sent this out to my newsletter subscribers earlier this month, but the book’s out now, so you get to see it, too.

This is the sticker sheet I made to go with the Westkings Heist omnibus release. It’s Tahl, of course! With a couple goodies he makes use of through the series.

You can watch me ink and color it, too! I’ll drop the video below.

I’m back to preparing Serpent’s Crown (Snakesblood #5) for its February release now, so you’ll be hearing more about that shortly.