March on! (yeah, that's terrible)

Family events -- this wewk we had a dance competition for my middle daughter, select basketball tryouts for my oldest (no pic), and an attempted double-sleepover for my youngest, which ended in a fail on the 2nd night due to the Too-Much-Ice-Cream incident (definitely no pic).

We also had the pleasure of seeing our close family friends baptize all five of their kids on Sunday. Their church reminded me of my youth, with much more recitation from the congregation, traditional hymns, what I'm going to call costumes on their clergy (I know they don't call them that). My youngest daughter told me, "Their church is definitely more holy than ours." 🤣

Writing Updates

leidolfr completed the map of FreeWorld. I liked it so much that I went back and requested a color version for my web page (B&W for the book).

As a reminder, these pics were my chicken-scratch input. Pretty cool what he's done. Now I want more maps. On the flip side, I'm still dragging my feet on the rest of the artwork for Book 4. If I may psychoanalyze myself for a moment, I think it is because I don't believe what I have in mind can be conveyed and drawn without a great deal of frustration, and a hefty price tag, and I'm not ready to take it on yet.

I sent out book merch to my street team--some members have received the goods already. My thanks to them for all the help they've given me. I used a company called Printful, and through them, I could create my own shipping label. I'm not totally happy with the way the text under the logo on the mug isn't centered. But there's always room for improvement! (already updated... so easy on their web site!)

I'm still in the grammar and style edit phase of Book 4. inkqueenmarketing has put together a beta-reader team, but I'm waiting for her to catch up to Book 4 before I send out ARC copies to the others (so that she can help guide them on beta feedback).

I received a mid-read review of Book 3 that meant a lot to me. I've tried including IG posts in my newsletter before, and it didn't work out, but trying again. Thank you, Edith!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cafsc3nP7Qj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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On the drearier side, I spent a great deal of time this weekend working on taxes. Trying to sort through all my book stuff made me realize how terribly sloppy I've been in tracking my spending for writing. I definitely need to think through how to manage that better.

o To-Do list for writing last week:

~~Email updates~~
~~Grammatical and Style edits for Book 4 - through chapter 15.~~
list out the pics I want and decide whether they are truly achievable. Why can't I get the ball rolling on this? What the heck is my problem?

o To-Do list for writing this week: