Newsletter - February 21, 2023

I'll keep the newsletter brief this week. I don't think I mentioned my oldest daughter having her wisdom teeth pulled last week. She was a mess under anesthesia, but the office staff laughed as she serenaded them. It was hard for her to take a week off of basketball, but that's what the doctor ordered. My wife and I made a weekend trip to Houston to help with aging parents, and my mother watched our kids. While we were gone, my mom tangled her foot in debris from the ice storm while walking her dog and earned a bruised knee and black eye. Hi, mom! Life is slappin' our family around of late.

We tried to have a little fun during all the bad stuff.

I'm still going back through Mother of Trees and writing a different PoV. It's going slower than I thought it would--the ideas are all there, but I'm struggling to get them on paper (virtual paper). It's not like me to sit and stare at a paragraph, but that's happened a lot lately. Oddly, this effort might make the release date for the next book earlier, as it pushes me toward splitting the book differently. So I may need to up my game on the artwork.

Mildly interesting bit: I've been trying to get my book(s) into our local B&N for a loooong time now. I added an IngramSpark option since that triggers the "returnable" bit on B&N systems (while B&N press does not... isn't that dumb? I mean, why create a publishing department that cannot sell to your own brick and mortar?). The person I talk with at our B&N keeps trying to order my books for the store, and someone keeps cancelling her order. Anyway, I finally had an order on Ingram, so I went over to the B&N to hunt for my book. It turns out, they hadn't ordered it. So who did? I've never advertised on Ingram--I set it up solely to get my book in B&N. I don't see any way to tell from Ingram who ordered it, but it encourages me that someone did, even if it is only 3 copies. And, my friend at B&N tried once again to place the order. She told me to swing by yesterday and she would have a better chance of seeing who cancelled it and why (assuming someone would again cancel it), but I was out of town. I'll try to make it today. [I went by, and she told me she had to "escalate" the order, as it still is not clear who is cancelling it and why it is getting cancelled.]

o To-Do list for writing last week: