What's She Been Up To?

Over several weekends, from late February through mid-April, hubs and I have been remodeling our basement storage room into a home office / writing cave. What started as 70s fabulous linoleum and cinderblock wall has been transformed into a shiplap and gray wood-look tile modern haven for writing. (For pics, check out my Facebook page...pics to be added to my website soon as well.)

I LOVE my new digs for writing! I am so happy with how it turned out! Motivation for sure. Since moving into the distraction-minimized office, I have been able to concentrate at a level I've never experienced, and productivity has exploded! I've published book 2 of DCYE in paperback, submitted book 3 for paperback, completed book 4 (150,900 words / about 475 pages in print) for paperback, and eBook, and it's gone through my amazing editor for final review. Book 4 is in formatting and prep phase for publishing, and should be released by late May. Book 3 paperback should be released mid-May. After all this, I'm taking a month off for summer vacation, but plan on diving into book 5 in July.

In addition to remodeling, yes, I'm a soccer and karate mom, so practices, games and matches are a regular part of real life. Three of our 4 girls, 8, 11, and 13, all earned orange belts last week! In addition, my 8 year old, playing on the 10 year old team, won 3rd place in the city soccer league today! They beat the team that knocked them out of the championship match, by a score of 9 - 2 today, so they get a team trophy! (No trophies for 4th place) Never give up was a tough lesson to learn, but the kids rose to the challenge, and learned perseverance in the process.

Additional projects on the docket include publishing a fellow author's books in paperback (my editor TK), working on a mustery-suspense crime novel with her, compiling short stories for a collection, gathering more fodder for DCYE series on-location in Florida, and revisiting a stand-alone noir mustery-suspense crime novel based in New Orleans I started a couple of years ago.

In addition to all this, another first...
DCYE has been submitted for Writer's Digest and Independent Author Network Book of the Year! This is the first time one of my novels has been up for an award, so I'm excited, nervous and a little overwhelmed at once. I want to thank everyone who's picked up one of my books and fallen in. Without you, I'd just be a frazzled homeschool mom babbling in the corner instead of writing books for you. Thank you for kind words of support and appreciation of the work I put into each and every sentence!

LLIL,

Lynessa