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I finally muscled through the story on the Calyx Twins. You don't meet these sisters until Book 3, and the events take place in the timeframe of Book 3, so definite spoiler alert. Losing Faith, a Calyx Twins Story.pdf.​

Proud of my oldest daughter, who has been working her butt off in basketball (a relatively new sport for her, as I brought her up on soccer... don't tell her, but I don't understand basketball). She moved into high school this year, and from the tryouts, they'd started her on B-team, but this week starts the official season, and they asked her to play on both teams! And I know the payoff came from the coaches' seeing how hard she works. Plus, I'm super-excited to have more things to drive her to... 🤥

We did family pictures last weekend, and I'm told my wife and daughters are happy with at least one of the photos! [Maybe I'll find a new book cover photo? I haven't seen 'em yet.] As though that wasn't miracle enough, I received a recruiting call from Apple last evening, at my youngest daughter's Fall Fest while my wife manned (womanned?) the cake-walk. The call was flattering and a little exciting, but I'd coincidentally just made a promise to my boss to stick around. Still, it's nice to be wooed by a vampire AND a werewolf... methinks.

Speaking of the undead, let's talk Halloween music... I have a friend with twins born on Halloween who invited us to their birthday party, and I called dibs on DJ. Here's my playlist so far, but help me out.

• ​The Zombie Song by Stephanie Mabey
• ​Hide and Seek by Lizz Robinett
• ​Come Little Children by Erutan

SHOUT OUT to Jillian Yetter, who may or may not be reading this newsletter. She's the voice (will be the voice) behind the upcoming Audible for Book 1. I had the pleasure of listening to the first fifteen minutes of her reading this week. And the embarrassment of listening to how much I struggled with passive voice in Book 1. 😳🤦‍♂️ On the bright side, I can appreciate that my writing has gotten better! Anywho, that'll wrap up mid-Nov, and Book 3 is trending to December rather than January. I'm thinking I should do a "deal" of some kind in that time frame, in order to gain some momentum and excitement prior to Book 3 release. Try for BookBub freebie of Book 1? Does that invalidate potential Audible sales, or get more clicks and interest and create more Audible sales? 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the feedback on the Book 1 pics from last newsletter--I manipulated the pic with Grundle and Galad to make the characters stand out more (updated pic on the right). The sad part is, I did the cleanup using a phone app, while the artist had supplied (pause while I look it up) psd files, which stands for photoshop document. In other words, I'm sure the artist delivered some format where I could easily manipulate the background, but I don't have photoshop, and so resorted to cleaning up on my phone. [Update: I found there's a free program called Gimp that lets you manipulate psd files, but I opened the ones from my artist, and found that they didn't use layers. Weird, right? But I pinged the artist, and he/she sent me a new one with layers. I moved Grundle around to get that axe visible and giant him up a bit, AND I dimmed the background. I think I like that best of all; it's the third one.] And I heard the message about Galad not looking like you expected, J... he's not what I pictured originally either, but I'm getting used to him.

I heard your feedback on adding clouds to the building pics. Let me know if the cloudy pictures on the right are better or worse... and I can easily "dim" the background clouds now (the hard part of erasing the background so that I can layer it is done).

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Writing Updates

I sent Book 3 off to editor, who, coincidentally, was on vacation for the last week. 🤨🤣 But that doesn't affect schedule--I think my long poles now are pictures and cover. And the more I think about the cover, the more I want to redo the cover of Book 2. But I digress.

As I mentioned, I wrapped up the Calyx Twins story, Losing Faith, though I intend there to be a second part that takes place in the time frame of Book 4 (which I will write while I'm cleaning up Book 4). Again, spoiler alert regarding the story, as it takes place amidst events from Book 3. I don't think I ever mentioned that I submitted a short story to a competition--I didn't post that one as a freebie, but it is lurking. The Calyx Twins story might have been a better fit.

o To-Do list for writing last week:

• Email updates
• Get started with external editor (sort of... I sent it... she was on vaca!)
• Submit next 3/3 pictures for Book 3. Submitted 1/3. 2/3 to go.
• Calyx Twins short story - given my track record, I will no longer say "next week", but I think there's a good chance it will be done next week. :) Woohoo! That one took a while.
• Incorporate Book 3 feedback as it comes in -- ongoing.
• Week 2 of Amazon Ad Challenge - I blew this one. Somehow I missed the signup, but they were kind enough to send me the links after. I reviewed the notes yesterday, and didn't see anything breath-takingly new over the previous challenge. Still, since I haven't conquered advertising, I would have liked to play along. But I also recognize that those efforts are a bigger time-suck for me, b/c I'm learning and b/c of the pace, and I have to admit to myself that it isn't realistic to completely plug-in.

o To-Do list for writing this week:

• Email updates
• Work with editor on Book 3
• Submit 2/2 remaining pictures for Book 3. It probably won't happen this week - work has piled up on the artist's side, and they're just not ready. Good problem for them!
• Incorporate Book 3 feedback as it comes in
• Put pics in Book 1 and re-release - lots of button-clicking and staring at details. Oh, and this is stupid - I didn't realize that the kindle version actually allows you to click on links. 🤦‍♂️ I need to go back and update the end of Book 1 to point to Book 2. Does the narrator read that aloud? 😬 I've never noticed. "Aiche Tee Tee Pee Colon Backslash Backslash ... "

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Previous Newsletters

• ​New pics for Book 1 - 10/19/2021
• ​Happy Birthday, Middle Egg - 10/12/2021
• ​Age Before Duty -10/05/2021 📜​ Age-Before-Duty.pdf​
• ​Grundle's Hope - 9/28/2021 📜 Grundle's-Hope.pdf​​​

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Visit sjmorriswrites.com​

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