I’m baking granola this morning and my cozy tiny house smells of cinnamon. I don’t have particularly high expectations for how this granola is going to turn out, because the Best By date on my oats was sometime in 2020, I didn’t have any vanilla, and I’m experimenting with the temperatures on my air fryer, but even if it is inedible in the end, it sure smells nice now.

Plus, it’s a Monday morning, not yet 9:30, and I’ve already started with the experimental cooking, so go, me. Shine on, self. It’s always satisfying to start off a new week feeling productive. Although I guess if my granola is truly inedible, my accomplishment won’t feel like much.

That said, nothing is inedible for chickens. If I decide I can’t eat my granola, I will feed it to their royal majesties and the other ladies of the chicken coop and they will be thrilled. Then I will get to have eggs, which is win-win.

Of course, I actually get to have eggs whether or not I feed my granola to the ladies. Egg season is definitely in full swing right now. The chickens pretty much stop laying in December and then in February they start up again. If I’m the person to collect the eggs, I generally bring them into Suzanne’s kitchen where they get washed, put into egg cartons, and stashed on top of the refrigerator until a neighbor or some random passerby knocks on the door and says, “Hey, I see your sign says Eggs.” (Actually, the neighbors say something more like, “Any eggs today?”)

Last week, when Suzanne was away, I had three pleasant egg-related interactions. One was a college-age kid, so young, who was really pleased to get cheap eggs. $4 a dozen is a bargain in Arcata right now. He told me that at the farmer’s market they were $10/dozen. Ouch.

The second was from a nice woman who wanted to know if they were organic. Um, nope, not in the least. They eat our table scraps and we don’t eat exclusively organic, so they don’t either. Also, I’m going to guess that if the chickens started getting sick, and a vet said it was bacterial and antibiotics would help them feel better and save their lives, Suzanne would vote for saving their lives. They are happy chickens, however — they’ve got lots of space, friendly relationships, and regular treats. The woman didn’t wind up buying any eggs, but it was still a pleasant conversation.

The third was from a regular, delighted that eggs were back in season. He told me  we had the best eggs in town. I used to be of the belief that an egg was an egg, although I bought expensive eggs because I hoped my extra dollar would mean a better life for the chickens laying them. But now I’m pretty convinced that the ladies of the chicken coop do, in fact, lay really superior eggs, more delicious than your average egg.

Also, they lay very pretty eggs. I have many more than usual in the tiny house today, because Suzanne’s kitchen is in the process of being as disrupted as mine was last week, and I looked at them this morning and thought of Easter. Their royal majesties lay the ones with the greenish tint, while last summer’s new hens must be laying the speckled brown ones. But I wouldn’t even have to dye them to have a nice Easter collection.

My oven timer just beeped, so I think I’ll go check on my granola. And then move on to other things, specifically, writing my next book. I didn’t think this blog post was going to be about eggs and chickens — I thought it was going to be about self-publishing — but you know, eggs and chickens will probably be just as interesting to Future Me. Maybe even more interesting.

Goals for today: 1000 words on A Gift of Sight (possibly to be called A Gift of Touch); a walk with my writing buddy and Sophie; and a delicious meal that might include eggs. May all your Mondays be equally satisfying!

As long-time readers will recall, back in April of 2020, I was living in my van, parked in the street outside my friend Suzanne’s house. The pandemic was raging, the great isolation was on, and I was not exactly enjoying van life. Vans are great when you’re going places. When you’re sitting still, they’re… less great. Anyway, Suzanne had, in her back yard, a renovated garage. Her stepson had been living there, but he’d moved out. Let’s see if I can show you some pictures from back then…

It had a few problems: no heat, no hot water, and the vivid orange was not a color I could live with. All solvable problems! By June of 2020, I was cozily ensconced in the freshly-painted tiny house, newly named Serendipity. A few more pictures:

In the summer of 2021, I finally moved back into my van, but as I headed east, I realized that I really didn’t want to drive anymore. I loved Serenity, the van, but I also loved Serendipity and Arcata and sitting still. By the beginning of August, I’d sold Serenity and was hopping on a plane to come back to Arcata for good.

But as wonderful as Serendipity was/is, living full-time in a space so small posed some challenges. First and most significant, the sink was a bar sink, suitable for washing a few glasses, impossible for washing anything large. My cooking options were limited anyway, but even using the Instant Pot was a hassle, because I needed to run into Suzanne’s house to wash it. I’d bought one of those Ninja Everything cooking tools — an oven, an air-fryer, a toaster, a dehydrator, all-in-one! — but the pans for it wouldn’t fit into the sink, so I rarely used it.

Challenge #2, clutter. As you can see from the above pictures, everything I owned was out in the open. In those pictures, it’s not such a big deal, because I had an enormous closet (aka, the van) parked right outside and most of my belongings stayed in the van. But when I moved into Serendipity permanently, everything I owned moved in here with me. The shelves were overloaded, the cubes overflowing. I tried to stay organized, but there was only so much I could do. Ruthlessly culling my possessions could only take me so far.

Challenge #3 wasn’t actually a challenge, but an opportunity. The floor in Serendipity was wood laminate and when Serendipity was unheated (when Suzanne’s son lived here), it had gotten damaged by the damp. They thought then that it was water seeping up from the ground, but I think it was probably just Arcata’s climate. S had warned me that the floor would feel cold and wet & that there was no point in putting rugs down because they’d get moldy, but with the heat on, that never happened to me. So I didn’t think it was an ongoing problem. But if we were going to try to solve Challenges #1 & 2, it seemed like a good opportunity to solve #3, too.

Challenge #4, also not a real challenge. But I hated the bathroom floor because I could not get it clean. It was just impossible. The dirt was ground in. No matter how hard I scrubbed, it looked dirty. The dirt didn’t come off, so it wasn’t like I was walking in mud puddles every time I dripped water on the floor after a shower, but still, it felt dirty to me and I’m not a huge fan of dirt.

So, the solution/plan: a new kitchen sink, a real countertop, cabinets for storage, and a new floor for the entire place, including the bathroom.

We began two weeks ago, by tackling the storage shed, cleaning it out and making space for all of my possessions to go into it. (Along the way, we found leftover laminate for the bathroom floor and I discovered that what I thought was dirt was actually the pattern of the laminate. Ha. I went back into Serendipity and studied the bathroom floor and realized yes, what I thought was “dirt” was actually patterned. Somehow my scrubbing had never made that clear to me. Oh, well. TBH, I’m glad we’d already purchased the new flooring and that I didn’t know it could be returned, because the new floor is soooo much nicer.)

Ten days ago, Suzanne helped me move my mattress into her house and then headed off on a trip. I then moved all the rest of my belongings, either into her house or into the shed. Last week, the old floors, sink, shelves and cabinets were removed, and then new ones installed. This weekend, I moved all my stuff back in. So!

My new kitchen sink: deep and with a dish rack and cutting board included.

My new kitchen cabinets and countertop

And the kitchen cabinets open, so you can see how much stuff is now tucked away and how incredibly awesome they are. With bonus cat.

A close-up of the floor. I don’t have any pictures of the old floor, but this one is much, much nicer! Also made of vinyl, so heavy-duty and not going to get damaged by water. The color is off in this photo, though — it’s really the gray of the floor in the picture with the cat in it, just above.

The rest of the kitchen — a table and a bigger fridge. The need for a bigger fridge and a place to eat were challenges that I solved back in 2021, but they’re looking much nicer now that the room is not so crowded.

As I look over this blog post, I feel like I could have done a much better job with all the current photos: the cutting board still had the plastic wrap on; the light wasn’t the greatest; there’s some random clutter, like the bright red tupperware top sitting on the countertop. And I actually redid my bins in the closet so that the colors are nicer (because I had extra bins leftover after getting rid of one set of cubes.) If I was an interior designer or a realtor, I’d definitely stage my pictures better. But I’m neither of those things and this isn’t a blog trying to sell anyone on new cabinets, just the explanation for why I mentioned moving last week!

In other news, I’m exhausted. Ha. But recovering now that I’m back in Serendipity and not lugging my belongings around, and looking forward to some fun cooking now that I can clean-up, and some productive days now that my own clutter isn’t stressing me out!

In Luck news, I’ve sold 23 copies and it looks like maybe 2 people have read via Kindle Unlimited. Not bestseller list #s, that’s for sure, but I am deeply grateful for the 25 of you who’ve bought me a cup of coffee, and I hope you enjoy/ed Laurel and Niall’s story!

Late last night, I realized it was St. Patrick’s Day and I’d just missed a fun opportunity to publish my book about luck on a holiday related to luck. Drat! If I’d been the kind of organized author who thought ahead two weeks… but I wasn’t. The only thing holding me up, though, was working on keywords and a book cover for the print edition, so I decided to go for it. Voila! (That cover is a link to the book on Amazon, I hope.) 

I spent a fair amount of time this week reading current advice for marketing self-published books. How to do a book launch, where to advertise, how to build a network of supporters with advanced review copies, etc, etc. Promotions, blog reviews, proper use of a mailing list, pre-orders, all that kind of thing.

I should have done all of it before I published, of course, but I didn’t. Or maybe that should be, “I should have done all of it before I published, but I didn’t, of course.” Ha. What a difference moving a couple words makes. 

I’m probably not going to do any of it now, either. Do I lack ambition? Faith in my work? Drive? Maybe. Maybe all of the above. But really, I think my fundamental problem as an indie author is that I write too slowly, and I think I need to work on that problem more than I need to work on marketing a single book. Every minute spent trying to sell Luck is a minute not spent writing the next book. So Luck is published, and I will probably try to let my mailing list know about it sometime within the next couple of weeks* and otherwise, I’m just going to move on to the next thing.

*My mailing list software is doing a big upgrade next week, I believe, and I’d rather re-learn the software as it will be, rather than re-learning it as it will no longer be.

What is the next thing? I don’t know! Not for sure. But it might involve a character named Serena, who has a minor but entertaining role in A Gift of Luck. Meanwhile, I hope you read Luck, I hope you enjoy Luck, I hope you review Luck! (It’s exclusive to Amazon right now and in Kindle Unlimited, so if you’re a KU person, it’ll be free to read. I haven’t seen the print edition yet — obviously, given that I finished the print cover at about 10PM last night — but it’s also available as a paperback.) 

Here’s the current book description for A Gift of Luck. I was going to claim that it was the one and only thing I accomplished this week, but actually that’s totally not true. I also did some editing, sent links to some beta readers, and moved out of my tiny house. (Temporarily on the last, but it still involved packing up all of my possessions and shifting them from one place to another.)

Anyway, comments are welcome! I hate writing these things, but my strategy for this one was apparently to discuss it with everyone willing to listen as I looked for the words that resonated, both with them and with me once I said them aloud. Escape & surprise, that’s what resonated. 🙂

Running away was a mistake. Getting lost was magic. 

• Rule #1 of running away: check the weather. 
• Rule #2: bring a map. 
• Rule #3: get your car a tune-up before you leave home. 

Laurel Moreland’s great escape isn’t going as planned. Florida drivers are crazy; the Florida weather is not what she anticipated; and the mysterious orange symbol on her dashboard feels like doom. But when she stops in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town hoping to find a mechanic, her adventure takes a turn for the better.

Tassamara, the town, is full of secrets and surprises, starting with the crowds at the restaurant, a startling invitation or two, and a very appealing guy. 

Niall Blake’s vacation is also not going as planned. With an engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket and a strained relationship with his twin brother to repair, the last thing he expected to be distracted by was a mysterious woman. What is Laurel running away from? Why won’t she tell him? And how can he help her? 

Return to Tassamara in A Gift of Luck, a short, stand-alone novel with some familiar characters. It takes place after the events of A Gift of Grace, so does include spoilers for the previous books in the Tassamara series, but can be read without reading the others. 

A little bit of a ghost story, a little bit of a mystery, and lot of a romance.

I’m debating next steps. If I wanted to pay for a pre-order ad from BookBub (around $200), I should post it today, apply for the ad, and then wait two weeks. But I went back and checked how that did in 2018 when I released my last Tassamara book (oh, how time flies) and the sales I got from it were negligible. $4/sale is what I calculated, which meant taking a loss on the ad. So yay me for including that data for myself and I will probably not be doing that.

I tried to talk myself into spending the next couple of weeks working on marketing: first looking at each book, making sure that its presentation was as polished as could be, rewriting some blurbs (Sia Mara doesn’t sell at all, so working on those blurbs might help), creating Amazon A+ content for all of them, creating an advertising plan that would maximize my never-used sale opportunities from Kindle Unlimited, aka free days and discounting… and then I downloaded approximately 20 books from Amazon, mostly from Kindle Unlimited, and read them all, one after another, on a gigantic binge of escaping from reality.

(11 books by K.M. Shea, of which The Court of Midnight and Deception series was by far my favorite; everything I could find by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, who is actually dramatically worse than me at marketing, judging by the fact that her author page doesn’t list the majority of her books and her covers are abysmal; three books by Delia Marshall Turner, which are delightfully weird and cheap enough that I was willing to buy them even though they weren’t in KU; and finally Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls, by Jane Lindskold, which is a book I loved almost 30 years ago and was delighted to re-discover. That one was interesting to reread, but my 2022 self found the level of casual sexual violence in it — not explicit, but clearly stated — hard to take. The “good guys” prostitute children but hey, are free from societal oppression. Um, nope. Nope, nope, nope. And how was my 1994 self not revolted by that?) All those links are probably affiliate links, so if you buy something on Amazon from one of them, I might get 4% of the purchase price. Yay, pennies! But I was reminded of the virtues of affiliate links because my own book purchases came from Rachel Neumeier’s blog, and I felt like she deserved her pennies, too.

Hmm, I feel like I’ve gotten very distracted from the point of this blog post. Which was what, exactly? Oh, right, what I’m doing with A Gift of Luck. Well, probably tweaking that description a few hundred more times while I wait for beta readers to tell me what questions they have, then reading the whole thing aloud (always fun), and then maybe releasing it. So, maybe this week? I’m hoping that the work on the tiny house will be done on Thursday or Friday, letting me move back in on the weekend. Maybe I’ll aim to finish before then, so my fresh start in the tiny house can also be a fresh start on my next book. Doesn’t that sound fun?

My file still contains plenty of notes that say things like “Consider revising” and “check for repetition” and “were you going to do something with this?” But I typed the words “The End” in my file today. And then thought, ugh, that’s silly, the reader knows it’s the end and deleted them. Still, the point is that I reached a conclusion to a story. Yay, me!

It’s a little short — the current version just barely breaks 60,000 words, so it’s a quick read. I thought I’d probably add a few thousand words on my first editing pass, and I did, but I also deleted a few thousand words, so net gain of editing was negligible.

I don’t think I’ll be adding any more scenes. I wondered before I did my first read whether maybe I could — maybe a breakfast scene, maybe another outing somewhere? — but it felt very cohesive when I was reading it. If I added, it wouldn’t be because there are missing scenes, it would be adding just for the sake of adding, which is not something I feel inclined to do. I think it’s just going to be a short book.

I’m too close to it to know if it’s any good, of course, but it’s a little bit of a ghost story, a little bit of a mystery, and a lot of a romance. I did not expect those proportions to turn out that way. I specifically thought sometime back in December when I returned to this story that I wasn’t going to worry about writing a “romance.” Although what I said back then was that I’d be writing “stories that maybe wind up with happy endings where good people who like one another end up looking toward the future together” and that’s actually a very apt description for what my main characters wound up doing.

I guess I should set a release date. And ask for some beta readers, do a few more editing passes, write a book description… maybe that’s all for later, though. I think today I’m just patting myself on the back. Shine on, self!