Lynne Stringer's Blog, page 3

The Verindon Conspiracy is out now!

After a few struggles and technical difficulties, finally my latest book, The Verindon Conspiracy, is available now.

The Verindon Conspiracy takes place about ten years after the epilogue in The Reign, book 3 in The Verindon Trilogy, but it can be read as a standalone. You don’t have to have read the trilogy to enjoy it. It follows the story of Misilina, Sarah and Keridan’s youngest child, as she graduates from the Academy and goes on her first mission as an agent. A lot of everyone’s favourite characters from the trilogy are back – Sarah and Keridan, Pravvit and Perisina, Ardon and Talma, and a few others, as well as plenty of new ones.

I’m hosting an online book launch on Facebook live and everyone’s invited. The details are here, in case you would like to attend. I’m looking forward to getting back into the world of Verindon for what may be the last time. I am exploring a new world at the moment, and I may make that my focus from this point on. So if you’re a fan of my Verindon stories, check out The Verindon Conspiracy today. :-) You can read more about it here.

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Oz ComicCon Homegrown

This is my first blog for the year, and I apologise for being so tardy. However, with Omicron hitting, some new health challenges and a new release coming up, I’ve been a bit swamped.

But now I’m gearing up for the release of The Verindon Conspiracy and for my first event of the year, OzComicCon Homegrown in Brisbane.

OzComicCon will be held on 26-27 March at the Brisbane Convention Centre. I’ll be there at the Rendered Realms stand with Jeanette O’Hagan. Unfortunately, Adele Jones can’t join us on this occasion. Our stand number is AA3, so if you’re attending, be sure and look us up.

I had hoped I might have copies of The Verindon Conspiracy for this event, but it doesn’t look like that will happen, sadly. However, they should be coming shortly after that, so keep tabs on my website for news on its release and where you can buy it.

Hope to see you at ComicCon!

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It’s Christmas again

We’ve reached the Christmas season once more in what’s been another difficult year for most.

On a personal level, this year has been a hard one for me, but as far as my writing goes, it’s been encouraging. Although a couple of events were cancelled due to COVID, I still had five major ones over the course of the year, much better than in 2020. I also signed a contract with my publisher for the publication of The Verindon Conspiracy, my next book, which will be out in 2022. It takes place about 10 years after the epilogue in The Reign (Verindon #3). I’m looking forward to its release and I think fans of the trilogy will enjoy it, as you’ll get to see some old friends again.

I’ve also been writing a new manuscript called Keeper of the Archives. It’s still in its early stages and I’m not sure yet if it’s going to work as the story has presented some challenges, but hopefully I’ll be able to sort them out next year. Even if I can’t, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the characters and inhabiting that world for a while, which is always an exciting part for me.

I’m sure 2022 will have its ups and downs, just as 2021 has, but hopefully more ups and downs.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers and editing clients a merry Christmas, happy holidays and happy new year. God bless.

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2021 throws a curve ball

I think most of us hoped that 2021 would be an improvement on 2020 with its COVID craziness and all the problems associated with living in a pandemic. It didn’t help that 2020 was also a hard year for our family personally, so I was looking forward to a better 2021.

Unfortunately, 2021 decided not to be cooperative in a major way in my life, as in the first half of the year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I’m happy to say that I’ve had surgery and they managed to remove all the cancer cells, so it’s likely I will be around for many years yet, but it was difficult to deal with this news and I struggled to see past the diagnosis. It’s still hard, even now, to acknowledge that I’ve had cancer, and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this. It seems weird to say, as I never felt unwell; the problem was found in a routine check so it’s not like I felt sick or sore or anything like that. Confronting the fact that I am now a breast cancer survivor has been almost as difficult as the diagnosis itself.

Happily though, I should be through the worst of it, although there will be a lot of checks over the next few years, and I’m glad to say that I’ve also been busy as an author this year. I’m writing a new book at the moment, tentatively titled Keeper of the Archives. My publisher has agreed to publish The Verindon Conspiracy, which should be out in April 2022, and I’ve had a number of events so far this year, even while going in and out of lockdowns, and I still have another two to come – Brisbane Supanova in November and Brisbane Comic-Con in December.

So things are looking up. I’ll try and keep my thoughts in that direction, rather than looking back.

With Jeanette O’Hagan at the Logan Writers Festival, September 2021

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Events are coming!

Things are opening up more in 2021 and I’m happy to say I’ll soon have some events happening. The first will be the Omega Writers Book Fair on 31st July. I’ll be taking part in a panel talking about book marketing; always a challenging subject! Watch this space for more details as the event draws closer.

There will be another book fair in August with more details coming soon. Then I will be looking at Brisbane ComicCon and Supanova later in the year, so hopefully you’ll see me there. :-)

It’s great to have some things to look forward to. It was wonderful to be able to go to Gold Coast Supanova again in April. Everyone else seemed happy to be there too as it looked like the attendance was pretty good.

Hopefully things will pick up everywhere now that vaccines are being rolled out. With any luck, next year will be completely back to normal. I hope so. :-)

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Gold Coast Supanova going ahead

If all things stay as they are, it looks like Supanova will be going ahead on the Gold Coast in April.

I will be there at the Rendered Realms stand with Jeanette O’Hagan and Adele Jones on the 16th and 17th April, 2021. It will be our first event since March 2020, when COVID brought everything to a halt.

I’m trying not to get too excited, as I know an outbreak could happen again and suddenly we’ll be plunged into lockdown, but we’re doing well here in Queensland and the vaccine is being slowly rolled out, so I’m hopeful it will all go ahead.

Even more exciting is that this will be my first event with both The Verindon Alliance and Crossed Spaces, the new anthology in which I have a story and which I helped edit. It’s always exciting to bring new books to these events and I’m proud of both of them.

It will be interesting to see how many exhibitors and attendees there are. I know they have COVID-safe plans in place, so I presume that means limits on how many people are in the convention centre at once. I’m sure the centre has everything figured out, as I know they’ve liaised with the government about how to do this safely. I’m waiting to see what the requirements will be on the exhibitors. Hopefully nothing too arduous, but I’ve got masks and hand sanitiser ready to go, so I’m looking forward to getting out and selling books again!

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Christmas 2020

I think a lot of people will be glad that we’ve finally reached the end of 2020. I know I am. I hope that next year will prove a lot easier for many of us.

We haven’t had it as bad as many people out there who’ve lost jobs and livelihoods, and here in Australia, we’ve done pretty well overall with managing the virus, so much so that my time shopping this morning looked pretty normal for this time of year. And it’s a relief to know that there are a few promising vaccines on our horizon. Hopefully they’ll help bring an end to this global situation.

This wasn’t the best year to release a book, but I think that The Verindon Alliance, my new release, has done okay considering all my usual in-person events were cancelled. That’s a relief. Although I’m hardly a best-selling author, sales help out a little and it’s nice to know that some people look forward to reading my books. Hopefully, The Verindon Alliance allowed its readers to escape reality for a while. That’s what books do. :-)

So if you’ve had a rough year, my prayer is that 2021 will be a better experience for everyone. That we can help each other up and out of this place we find ourselves in. That we can find common ground and love and be there for our neighbours. That we can come together (perhaps not always in the physical sense) and support each other as we continue to battle this pandemic.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a happy new year. See you in 2021. :-)

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

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What are you reading in 2020?

When COVID-19 hit and we all went into lockdown, I thought it would be a great chance to find some new reads. I bought a few books back in March this year, but found, to my dismay, that most of them didn’t engage me. I even bought a book from one of my favourite authors but didn’t feel the desire to keep reading it.

I was so relieved when Stephenie Meyer chose this year to release Midnight Sun, Twilight from Edward’s point of view. I’m a huge Twilight fan and had been waiting for this book for years. It didn’t disappoint and helped me get out of my reading slump. I’m looking forward to some more great books, especially as my friend, Nola Lorraine, releases her debut novel, Scattered, this month. I can’t wait to read it and go on to other great reads after that.

Which books have you discovered this year? Let me know in the comments. Your favourite might become mine too.

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A very unusual year

It’s been a long while since I’ve written a blog. I’d blame the pandemic, but I’m not sure it has to take full responsibility, although it had a surprising effect on me.

It made me insanely busy.

But first things first – the launch of The Verindon Alliance went well. I had to do it online only, as we were in the middle of a lockdown, but I held a Facebook live event, which you can see here, if you would like to, and it received a fairly good response. Sales have been encouraging, and this has been reassuring, especially since I haven’t been able to go to any of my usual haunts to sell. There has been no ComicCon and no Supanova, no bookstore signings, no school visits.

This might have driven me mad if it wasn’t for the other effect COVID had on me. As a professional editor, I expected all my editing work would dry up as soon as the lockdown started. Coupled with the possibility of losing sales because of the lockdown, I was a little worried. However, it seems that a lockdown gives people time to think about that manuscript that they’ve had sitting around for years that they haven’t done anything with. Enough of them clearly still had enough funds to pay a professional editor. At my busiest (which was, coincidentally, about when The Verindon Alliance was released) I was editing seven manuscripts simultaneously. The most I had ever done at once before that was four, and that had been for only a short period of time.

So I do have a reasonable excuse for not blogging in so long, although admittedly, the editing has been a bit slower lately. I’m still busy but it’s normal busy now.

But now I’m starting to think about that other time of year that’s coming up so quickly, as it does every year. Christmas. As I live in Brisbane, where we have pretty good control of the few small outbreaks of COVID we’ve had lately, I may even be able to do some bookstore gigs, and may have to see if I can sort that out soon. I’m also happy to do Zoom calls with any book club or anything like that if you feel like a visit, and a face-to-face if you’re local.

But it’s a real challenge to try and get back into thinking about how to market my book normally. The world is incredibly different now, so many things are still up in the air. But it may be a while before our pre-COVID lives return, if they ever do, so I encourage you to keep trying to find your new normal, as I try to do the same.

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Countdown to launch

The countdown is on until the launch of The Verindon Alliance. Just a few days now and you will be able to buy your very own copy! Owing to the coronavirus lockdown, I can’t do a physical launch this time, so I will be doing one on my Facebook author page, which you can see here.

This event will be held at 7.00 am on Saturday 2nd May 2020 Brisbane time, 10.00 pm on Friday 1st May 2020 London time, and 5.00 pm Friday 1st May 2020 EDT (New York). The event page is here. Make sure you click ‘going’ on the event, so you’ll know when to tune in.

The lockdown has made doing the launch a little trickier than usual. I will be doing my first ever Facebook Live event … well, unless you count the test run I did last weekend, just to see if it worked.

It seemed to, so I guess that means we’re go for launch.