Besides being a day late with this post, that is.

The past year has resulted in a whole lot of fun things for The Afflicted Saga, quite possibly the most notable being that Defilement (Book 3 of Tale of the Fallen) is now published and waiting for you to read it! You can pick it up in paperback or Kindle ebook here. If you don’t consume your ebooks via Kindle, I am planning on going wide in the near future, but as I’m lacking in the tech skills department, it’s been taking longer than I’d hoped.

Here’s the whole Tale of the Fallen so far (I’m estimating there are three more volumes in this series, then I get to start Mathias’s. Or Veed’s standalone. Yes, that sonuvagun gets his own book.).

And while we’re on the topic of how many books are left in Nes’s series, Defiance (Book 4) is officially two scenes away from a complete second draft! Woohoo! This book has given me a bit of a struggle so far, since it went through a major overhaul between the original rough draft and where it is now, and I suppose it’d be more fair to say this is draft 2.5. I tackled the main plot line two years ago during NaNoWriMo and had to weave in what the rest of the characters were doing around it. This was more work than I’d anticipated, and I still want to do one more pass for consistency before I push it out to my alpha readers, but this draft should be done before the weekend’s through. I plant to sit on it over the next couple weeks before putting on the next coat of polish.

So what will I be up to in the meantime? Besides my visit to GenCon, I’m going to be working on cleaning up the first novella of a portal fantasy I’m co-writing. Rest assured, The Afflicted Saga is still my primary focus, and I’m serving more as an elbows-deep developmental editor for this project than the creative driving force, but I do think my readers will have a lot of fun with this world once it’s ready to make its debut. Stay tuned for updates on that front!

And speaking of GenCon… I’VE GOT NEW SWAG!

I’ve wanted neat-o totes for quite a while, and now that I have multiple books in the same series and am beginning to attend more conventions, it felt like it was time to invest in designing some. I’m super pleased with how they turned out.

I also buckled down and got bookmarks for Deception and Defilement. I had put this off for quite a while, because I wanted to make sure new-to-me readers were directed to Devotion to being their journey on Abaeloth, but now that I’ve got my books in a couple of brick and mortar stores, I hit a bit of a dilemma. One of the most frequent reactions I get from Devotion is readers worrying about whether or not there is a Book 2 (those of you who have read it understand 😉 ). I’ve also run into quite a few readers who are reluctant to start an unfinished series due to fear that the author will get bored and walk away from the story before it’s finished. Hopefully, having bookmarks for Deception and Defilement will help convey that there’s a lot more awaiting Nessix and Mathias after Devotion.

I’ve got some buttons in transit, too, but since I ordered them completely last minute, I’m holding my breath and hoping they make it here in time. If they don’t, I guess I’ll have goodies to send out to my readers when I get back!

The last fun update I have is super exciting for me, because music’s been a significant part of my life. I was a show choir kid technically from elementary school all the way through high school. I played flute and piccolo from fifth grade until my sophomore year of college. I write with music playing almost all of the time.

Toward the end of last year, I had the opportunity to commission a couple songs for The Afflicted Saga! WHAAAAAAT?! That’s right! Tale of the Fallen has its own theme song now, and Etha’s theme is currently being worked on by the amazing and talented Richard Williams. “Courage Untold: Tale of the Fallen’s Theme” is complete and awaiting some art so I can make something attractive for YouTube, and Etha’s theme is getting close to completion as well. I cannot WAIT to share these songs with you!

So, those are the big things I’ve been up to over the past year. Now that we’re all caught up, I’m hoping to get to a more conversational pace with the blog. I’ve already got a few ideas floating around for my content schedule, but am always eager to deliver my readers what they want. Do you have any requests for content? Let me know in the comments!

Though I’ve been moderately active on my Facebook and Twitter pages, I realize the ol’ blog has been neglected for almost a whole year, and I’m working on putting on my “Real Author” pants and hammering out a schedule to keep that from happening again. In the meantime, I’d like to fill you in on a bit of what’s been going on in the adventure of bringing The Afflicted Saga to more readers.

At the very beginning of the year, I was fortunate enough to learn from some of the greatest in genre fiction at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado Springs. It was an amazing experience, full of a whole heap of insight to help me incorporate the business side of writing into the passion side of writing (something that’s always been a bit of a struggle for me), bunches of the most down-to-earth authors I’ve ever met, and a couple faces who you might have seen before 😉 If you’re an author wanting to take your game to the next level, I cannot recommend this seminar highly enough. It’s a great group of people with lifetimes of inspiration and knowledge to learn from.

I left Colorado Springs with more information than I knew what to immediately do with and am still working through everything Superstars had to offer to help bring Abaeloth to more readers and to bring more exciting content to my current group of fans.

Then in April, I got to do one of my absolute favorite things–meet a whole bunch of new readers! It’s always energizing and exciting to talk to people who love books as much as I do, and I’ve never left a public event where I didn’t bring home a list of new titles to hunt down thanks to recommendations from attendees.

RavenCon 13 was an absolute blast. I gave a reading to Bishop the Raven, ended up introducing nearly two dozen readers to Nessix and Mathias (yay!), and came home with a whole box of new books from other fantastic authors (double yay!). It may not have been as big of an event as Awesomecon, but it had great energy and I sincerely hope to return to this particular convention.

The last update regarding my whereabouts that I have for you right now is a Really Big Deal to me. You see… since I was 13 years old, Margaret Weis has been my writing hero. She’s the reason why I let myself believe that a daydreaming girl could grow up to become an epic fantasy author. When I found out that she consistently attends GenCon, I vowed to someday sell my books there, too. It became my “larger than life” dream. Long story short, a couple years into this publishing gig, I will be selling my books at GenCon next month! Of course, this means I now get to come up with a NEW “larger than life” dream (and am willing to take suggestions on that front), but for now, I’m good with enjoying the excitement that comes from knowing even great big goals can be achieved. If you’re going to be at  GenCon this year, swing by Authors’ Avenue for a visit. I’d love to talk books with you!

So that’s my updates of the where I’ve been over the past year. Stay tuned for updates on what I’ve been up to in that time, later this week. Until then, happy reading!

Hello Readers!

First of all, let me apologize (as I so often do) for my lengthy absence. Adjusting from life in the rural Midwest to one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country has not been a gentle or easy transition for me, and it’s unfortunately been reflected in my ability to balance my workload. The good news is I’m slowly creeping back into full operation, so be prepared for several super fun updates throughout the week!

Anyway, enough regrets. My goal is to keep my website and social media presence happy, inspiring, creative-fuelling spaces, and I had a learning experience this past weekend that I’d like to pass along to you.

If you also follow me over on Twitter and Facebook, you may have seen that I’m an equestrian. Horses have been a part of my life since I was a little girl and I currently share my daily life with two of the greatest ones ever born.

This is Star:

He’s a Missouri State Champion mounted shooting horse. He’s trained through 2nd Level dressage via one of the modern greats. He’s an amazing, experienced trail horse. He’s 28 years old and you’d never guess it from his behavior.

You see, no amount of thorough, correct training can change the baseline of a horse’s personality. Sure, you can shape it and they can learn how amazing it is to be able to work in harmony with a rider. But if you’ve got yourself a thinking horse, especially one who is easily bored, they often like to try to make their own fun. This past Saturday was one of those days.

Now, to be fair, at 28 years old and having dealt with a handful of corneal ulcers, Star’s eyesight may not be quite what it was when he was in his youth, and I was riding just before dark, when all the shadows were tall and probably hiding tigers. Due to no fault of his own, he’s been out of consistent work for the past few months and I only just started him back last week. I’ve been bringing him back into work slowly and cautiously, given his age and the fact that I know he has to build up a lot of muscle in his hind end. And I should have decided to saddle him up instead of hopping on him bareback… especially when he spooked on the way to the arena.

Long story short, I misjudged how much energy he had in him. I misjudged how easy the past several rides had been with him. And literally two minutes after I said (out loud to my husband and mare, who were waiting by the arena gate) “I think I’m going to get off now,” yet chose to take “one more lap” around the arena, Star gave me a great, big, dirty spook.

His spooks aren’t the terrifying ones that involve bolting or bucking or rearing. His are more of jarring splats followed by a hasty evasion either by leaping to one side or by spinning and taking up a lovely canter to “run” away. Saturday’s spook was one of the splat-leaps and, as I was bareback and quite unprepared, I very quickly felt myself slipping… and slipping… and then I was mostly parallel to the ground.

I have a healthy fear of falling off horses. Which is weird, considering the fact that I routinely choose to crawl up onto their backs. I had a pretty nasty fall in college that’s aftermath was managed poorly, and it’s something that stuck with me. There’s a certain degree of fear that goes with unscheduled dismounts and striking the ground never feels good. I’ll do everything in my power to stay on top of a spooking horse and if I realize it’s too dangerous to stay up there, I’ll do an emergency dismount and calm everyone down. I didn’t have the time to try that this time around.

But you know what’s weird? Due to the fact that I’m an overly cautious rider, it’s been about 9 years since my last fall. I remember it being terrifying. I remember it hurting. I remember thinking all of the terrible “What if”s that go with emergency type situations. But as I was sliding down Star’s barrel the other night, my brain engaged with only two thoughts; first, how to properly try to align my body to minimize damage and second, an almost humored resignation to the fact that this was happening and there was nothing I could do about it.

I hit the ground as perfectly as I could have asked for, Star hung his head in shame that he’d dropped his rider, and I was up within seconds, unfazed. Yes, I acknowledge it could have ended in a different manner, but since it didn’t, I chose to reflect on the event.

You see, there are a lot of things I don’t do with my horses–and in life–out of fear of getting hurt. In several of these cases, I’m competent enough in the presented question to handle most situations. Yet fear of pain–physical, mental, emotional–often holds me back. My anxiety struggles likely will never let me walk completely away from this fear, but you know what both my anxiety and I learned on Saturday?

Sometimes the things you fear aren’t half as scary or painful as you think they’ll be.

Yet how often do we let those things we’re afraid of hold us back from what we want to achieve? I realized I’ve been going through my life letting that fear of being hurt (which, admittedly, can be a really helpful trait in a whole heap of situations… just not all of them) keep me from doing a lot of things that I love and want to do. From adventures with my horses to adventures with my writing, both aspects of my life I’ve studied since I could still count my age on nothing but my fingers.

So here’s what I learned this weekend, Readers. Fear is okay. Fear often keeps us safe. But some fears have festered in our heads for so long that we let them rob us of the joys in life. Be smart. Be safe. But also remember that sometimes falling doesn’t hurt nearly as much as you’ve convinced yourself it will, and that the joy of the ride will always overshadow it.

If you have a passion or joy in your life that you’ve let fade away due to fear of pain or failure, I’m encouraging you to take a deep breath and hop in that saddle again. Odds are good you’ll stay on. And even if you do fall, it may not hurt as much as you feared.

Take care, Readers!