Hi everyone! I'm in my last 20,000 words or so in my rewrite for Bound's sequel, Severed. I still have today and tomorrow left of the holiday, so I'm trying to squeeze in a little bit of extra writing time to see how far I can get.

For anyone interested in ARC reading this sequel, you can apply using the Google form here: 
forms.gle/bvmM65cM7bZHZUMk7

Now, for today's post, I just have a few things to say:
1. I'm incredibly grateful for all the amazing people I have met and the wonderful experiences I have had this year. It's truly been a wild ride.

2. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and today, the biggest advice I have for anyone out there who is struggling to write is this: Take a walk. Get out into the world and look at things around you. Pay attention to what you see, smell, hear, and feel. Sometimes the best way to get connected - and tap into that inspiration - is to pull yourself away for a moment. 

3. I hope you all have a fabulous week. 

I'll be making some tweaks to the website over the next couple of weeks. My focus will be to give my books each a page of their very own that links back to the published works page.

If you'd like the full breakdown of upcoming events, website changes, book releases, blog posts, etc., sign up for my newsletter here: ​

Yesterday, I hosted my second ever book signing at the amazing new Barnes and Noble location in Murray, Utah. When I scheduled the event, I knew that it would be an author highlight event, so I was prepared to bring in all of my published works to date (8 books, and one with two versions).

The Staff
I stopped in briefly on Friday to make sure that all the books could be processed through the register, and the staff that were there were amazing in helping me get a plan together so that I could sell all of my books. 

Throughout the entire process (scheduling the event, prepping my books, setting up, and of course, throughout the three hour event), the staff were incredibly kind, friendly, and just generally amazing to work with. I felt completely welcome, and will definitely be reaching out to schedule more events in the future!
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The Location
Oh, boy. I won't spend too much time on this piece, because my focus is the event itself, but I've got to just mention how beautiful the location is. Thanks to the new bookshelves, the entire store has this mystical, labyrinthian vibe to it, but the big labels on all the shelves makes everything easy to find. This is one of those large locations with an upstairs and a downstairs, and the cafe is gorgeous!

If you haven't yet seen this location for yourself, I would definitely recommend visiting. 

The People
When I got to the store yesterday, and got everything set up, I immediately started getting people who came to look at the spread on the table. I had some bookmarks and stickers, and had one copy of each of my books displayed on the table, and I was amazed by how many people asked me to tell them about my books. By the end of the event, I'd gotten pretty great with my elevator pitch for each book - especially for my YA fantasy books. 

I was so grateful for all the friends and family who came to support. It was incredible to see so many people who were excited to show their support!

​While there were a lot of people I knew that I didn't expect to see (thank you all for coming!), I want to talk about something that's still fairly new to me: Meeting potential readers. I met so many amazing people yesterday. I got to talk with a couple fellow authors about their books! I got to talk with some teachers (and will even be sending a set of 14 copies of my children's book Especially You to his class). I got to talk and connect with a good number of potential readers and pitch my book to them, as well as talk with them about the kinds of books they enjoy reading. 

The Sales
When I started publishing my work, I was terrified because I knew I wanted to explore different genres. Everyone I talked to, and everything I read pretty much told me the same thing: Don't write in multiple genres, because it will be more challenging to find readers, and potential readers will have the impression that you cannot master any one genre. 

Now, I understand at least some of that to be true. If you're only putting out one book per year, and it's a different genre, many readers will only wait for the new books in the genre they enjoy reading. 

But! As I experienced yesterday, having multiple genres available actually drew in more readers than I would have if I'd just brought my YA fantasy books in, and I had some really incredible conversations with these various readers throughout the event.

From what I've read in preparing for my book signing events, the average author sells 4-5 books per signing, and up to 10 if they're lucky (or have a good number of dedicated readers). In my book signing event yesterday, I sold a total of thirty books. I sold 7 children's books (and likely would have sold more, but I sold out of the 5 copies of Especially You in the first couple of hours). I sold 3 YA fiction books, and a total of 20 YA fantasy books. It was an absolutely incredible experience!  

Thank you all for reading, and for all the support you've been sending this way as I continue to learn and grow on my author journey. I apologize if this post is a bit more messy than my others. I wanted to get this all down yesterday, but I didn't have enough time! Check back next week for more writing things!

My husband and I like to play question games, and we're always searching for new questions to ask each other. In the question game "Cloud Nine," we came across this card that so perfectly applies to this blog, so I thought I'd make this week's post to answer the questions on this awesome card!

How do you approach writing?
I try to keep the mentality that I should do something writing related as often as I can. I usually have some kind of plan for what I'll write each day, but I often start by writing a bunch of junk, and eventually it flows into usable content. I don't do a lot of detailed outlining before I write my stories, but I do update my outline in little chunks as I go.

For my blog posts, I almost always have an outline first. I usually get my ideas for the next week after I post each week, though I've found the best ideas spur from what I'm working on in the moment or current events in my life.

When is it easy?
Writing its easy when I can find some good time for it. Life is busy, work is busy, and being a mom means squeezing in precious little gems of writing time when there's a quiet minute and the baby is asleep. For me, writing is easiest when I have a clear direction for where the story is going next, and it's especially easy if I can pick up after my last writing session fairly soon afterward (no more than a day, usually), or if I left off last time on a cliffhanger. 

When is it difficult?
Writing is difficult for me if I'm not sure where to take the story next. It can also be particularly challenging if I've had a long day at work or with my son. Sometimes, by the time I get to my manuscript, my brain is ready to shut down for the night, so I'm lucky if I get a few sentences down. But I always try to put something​ on the page.

What do you love to write about?
Oh, gosh. I love to write about anything and everything. I keep a journal to write about the things going on in my life, the experiences I have, the things I learn (and now the things my son is up to). I keep a blog to gush about writing things - particularly the things I learn as I pursue my writing career. 

In my children's books, I love to write positive, inspirational messages, and in my novels, I love to write about family, good vs. evil, light vs. dark, free will vs. fate, etc.

What kind of writing are you drawn to?
Mostly, I'm drawn to fantasy. I love creating worlds and describing imaginary creatures. I find that's where I feel most at home when I'm writing. But honestly, anytime I'm writing (even if it's as simple as an email for work), I'm happy. I love writing poetry, fantasy, and children's books, for sure, but I'm content writing just about anything.

Thanks for reading, everyone! 

For anyone interested in coming to chat books with me next weekend, I'll be at the new Murray Barnes & Noble here in Utah for an author event. Hope to see some of you there!

I've been going through and making final tweaks to my cover design for my next release (Bound's sequel), and I've been thinking a lot about the things I've learned over the years about cover design. I'd like to share them with you today, as well as share the areas I still need to focus on for improvement. 

Professionalism really does matter, and this is something I knew when I started, but I had a hard time getting that concept to translate in my cover designs. This is an area that I will probably always continue to work on, because as the market shifts and my skills are improved, my covers will continue to change. But what makes a book cover look professional?

Color Scheme
Choosing colors that jive well with the theme of the book, that fit well with what the target audience might be interested in, and that catch the eye is an important aspect of cover design. For me, I try to choose colors that are symbolic for what happens within the book. 

Textures
Weird, right? But being intentional with the textures you use for your design can make a world of difference. This is an area that I have recently really started to explore. It's the little details, the smoke in the background, the shadows  and highlights, that can really create a lot of depth to your design - and make it more likely that a reader will pick up the book.

Graphics
I've learned a lot about creating and utilizing graphics in my cover design. When I designed the cover for my debut novel, Azure Light, I really used just one edited photo for the front and called it good. With that books' sequel, I added a dimmed photo of a forest on the back cover, and that made a huge difference with the design. When I did the cover designs for Clairvoyance and my children's books, I drew out the designs for the front and back covers, and I continued doing so for Bound, and now for this upcoming sequel.

The difference for these two newest releases is that I've learned a lot more about incorporating layers, cropping and rotating images, and layering them on top of each other to get the most depth. 

Font
This, I've learned, is one of the most important - and probably most overlooked - aspect of cover design: Creating your cover font. I've always known it's important to choose a font that fits the book and the genre you're writing in, and around the time I released Clairvoyance I heard a lot about how creating a custom font is super important, but I didn't know how to do that. 

For Bound, I really took my time and went through several iterations for my font before I went with the one that's actually on the cover. For this font, I chose an underlying font that had a similar style to what I wanted the cover to have. For this book, I chose Papyrus. Then, I got to work adding little curves, light and shadow surrounding the font, and finally, I went in and colored in the letters to have that reflected effect by hand. I did the same thing for the cover of my next release, as well. 

This is an area that I have plenty of room for growth. I'd love to learn what the best, most time effective way to go through this process would be, because designing my fonts for these books has been a looooooong process. 



Now that we've talked about the aspects of designing the cover aesthetically, we're only about halfway there! Other things I've learned about book cover design include...

Adding Reviews 
Adding reviews to your cover (especially your hardcover) can be a great way to catch a reader's attention, especially if you can get a review blurb from some well-known authors in your genre. This is an area where I have lots of growth to make. I know the best way to get these kinds of reviews is to find those influencers and authors and just ask if they'd be willing to read the book, but I have a tendency to chicken out when it comes to that asking part. This is something I'm definitely working on!

About the Author
You don't need an about the author on the back cover of your book, but it can be really helpful in getting readers to show more of an interest in your book. I can say from experience that readers like to know about the person who wrote the book. So share with them - if that's your style. I would recommend putting in an "about the author" section if you're designing a dust jacket, because it looks great, and it's also a nice way to fill up that space on the inside flaps of the dust jacket. 

Size
Oh, boy. This section could be a whole post in and of itself. But this one is already getting kind of long, so I'll just say this: If you are an indie author and you're designing or prepping your cover on your own, pay attention to the recommended sizes and ratios provided by the platform you're publishing with. And if your platform provides a template to use, I highly recommend sticking with that! Those templates make things so much easier.

Blurb and Hooks
This is an area where, admittedly, I spend a lot of time, and probably where I still need to make the most improvement. I'll have another post soon about writing your hooks and book blurbs, but especially for your back cover, it's important to make it catchy (not just give a summary of the book's content). 

​Consistency Across Your Series
Finally, I'll say this: You can design your new cover for each book. You absolutely should! Make it unique, make it reflective of the story within. But if you're producing a series, you want to have some consistency across all your books. Your fonts should be similar, your book size should be similar (not page length - it's okay to have longer books as you continue your series, but the actual trim size of your book should be the same). The location of the fonts and graphics on your book's spine should be the same across all books. I know we're not talking about interior design in this post, but your interior designs should be similar across all the books in your series, as well. 

All of these are things that I've learned and incorporated piece by piece over the last seven years. What have you learned? Is there anything in your publishing journey that you've learned about cover design that I have not included? Please share! 

That'll do it for today's post. Thanks for reading, everyone, and have a great rest of your weekend. 

Hi everyone! Happy weekend, and thank you all for your patience. As you may have noticed, the link to this blog has changed, because I FINALLY upgraded my website (it's been a long time coming) and changed my domain name. But on this blog, we'll continue business as usual.

Today, I'll be going over the third category of things I've learned in the process of writing, editing, and producing ​Bound: design, publishing, and marketing. Let's get into it!

​
Graphic Design
Oh, boy, did I learn a lot of things in the graphic design realm while working on this book. I talked about this a bit in part 2/3, but I did a handful of new things when it came to designing my book and marking for this release. I worked through...

• Cover Design, learning better strategies for manipulating images, utilizing digital textures, and creating my own font for the book
• Interior Design, creating graphics for the title page, chapter headers, and page breaks (as well as designing the map within the book)
• Promotional Graphics Design, where I tried to pick a theme (or a handful of themes) to utilize in my social media promotions. This included background images that I could use more widely, but also designs that were more specific to whatever I would post about that day.

KickStarter Campaign
I'm certain I will write a post about all the many, many things I learned in my time running Bound's book launch and sequel production KickStarter campaign, as well as things I plan to do differently in the future. But here are the highlights for you now. 

In the process of setting up this campaign, I did a lot of planning ahead. I planned and prepped in the early mornings and late evenings for months, creating videos and promo images for all the book merch I wanted to create. I created my KickStarter account and got my reward tiers created with the lists of items I wanted to include within each tier. This process took a TON of organizing, but it was also one of the coolest experiences I've had in my author career thus far, and through this KickStarter, I was able to produce all kinds of awesome book merch to promote the book, including stickers, bookmarks, art prints, book themed boxes, and I was even able to bring to life a dice gambling game that I created for the book. 

Through this KickStarter campaign, I also was able to learn how to ship items out of the country. 


Running Giveaways
Since I started my Instagram account back in 2018, I've seen many authors run giveaway campaigns to boost visibility for their books. While I've always thought that was a super cool way to engage the community, I never thought about trying it myself, until I saw how many people were interested in Bound's release. In the last two weeks of my KickStarter campaign, I was able to run two giveaways, and the process was awesome. 

I got new followers who were interested in the book and sharing with their friends and followers, and I was able to get my book to some people who otherwise might not have even known about it. 

I will absolutely be doing more giveaways in the future. It was an incredible experience that allowed me to connect with the community, engage with new readers, and honestly, I had a ton of fun getting the books and merch together. In my future giveaways, I'd love to make little themed bundles for my readers to receive. 


​Adjusting Metadata
This is an area that, I'll admit, I've always had a harder time with, and although I've learned a TON throughout the course of my author career, there is still plenty of room for improvement. One resource that helped me tremendously was Maria Secoy's The Truly Successful Author. In this book, Secoy covers metadata in today's context, and was so helpful for me to wrap my brain around what I can do with my book's metadata. 

While I've put in metadata for every book I've published, Bound was the first book where I really thought methodically about what my metadata was doing, and adjusted it mindfully. I was much more intentional with my keywords and book tropes, I created a handful of blurbs and book summaries to work with, and I focused more on choosing the most accurate genres and subgenera. 

After going through this process with a better perspective, I was able to go in and adjust my metadata for all of my other books. 


Connecting With Bookstores
While there are a ton of things that were new or different within the publishing journey I took for Bound, getting connected with Barnes and Noble has to be one of the biggest changes. This was something that I have been the most afraid of since I started my publishing journey back in 2017. 

I started trying to connect with local bookstores and libraries back in January with the release of Especially You, but I didn't hear anything back from my request. I was able to attend a handful of book signings for other authors throughout the year, and seeing them in that setting gave me the courage I needed to keep reaching out.

One day, on a regular trip to Barnes and Noble with my family, I asked the lady at checkout what it would take to set up a book signing with their location. She informed me that I would need to call the manager and ask. So I did, and the manager gave me an email address to reach out to. 

The manager at that location was the first to respond and schedule a book signing with me, but she also offered for me to sell my book in store, and even gave me more information on what I can do to get my books in Barnes and Noble on a widespread scale. 

After that, I had the confidence I needed to get in touch with other bookstore locations in the area, and I was able to get a handful of other author events on the schedule. If you'd like to attend any of these future events, check back on my Upcoming Releases and Events page for more information. 

Thank you all for joining me on this long and winding journey!