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New Year, New Goals

12 Wednesday Jan 2022

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So how are we all feeling now that 2022 has fully set in?

My Holiday season was filled with family, a friend that came for a visit, and some rest. My Aunt was kind enough to grab the Self-publishing Marketing books I requested for Christmas and my Cousin got me some more things for my Cricut so I need to get back into doing the coasters and mugs. I still haven’t actually set up my mug press in my Craft Room.

With the new year, and having a friend over for the Holidays, it made mom and I even more aware that we need to reorganize the Craft Room – with some shifting of the stuff in there we can fit a day bed in it and make it a guest room as well – because right now any guests have to sleep on the pull-out couch which 1) I didn’t realize how hard it was for sleeping all night and 2) is in the living room so barely any privacy.  But I’ve been wanting an excuse for a deep clean anyway, so this gives the perfect reasoning.

So that leads well into 2022 and my goals. I have a few, but I’m trying to keep them to a manageable amount.

  1. Clean the Craft Room and set it up as a partial Guest Room.
  2. Finish Book 2 of the Ragnarok Trilogy with my co-author and publish in July.
  3. Finish editing Into the Faerietale and get that out this year – thinking September-ish for it.
  4. Finish writing, edit, and get a short novella-length story out on my other pen name.
  5. Get my Ko-Fi shop running a little better both with book merch, books, and the necklaces I’ve been making.

All in all, it’s a manageable list, I think. A secondary goal is to create some more merch for both Hotel Fen and Into the Faerietale. I have the bookplates that I need to get up on the shop – so if people buy the physical book through Amazon or B&N and want our signatures on them, they can grab one. I also splurged and made pins:

Which I think came out amazing! They’re metal and enamel with butterfly clasps on the back. And I made special pin backings for them that match the bookplates the signatures are on.

But yes, those are my 2022 goals. What are your goals for the year? I’d love to hear them!

Book Review: Caffeinated Calamity by Amanda M. Lee

08 Wednesday Dec 2021

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Author: Amanda M. Lee
Publisher: Amanda M. Lee
Series: A Two Broomsticks Gas & Grill Witch Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars

Can you tell that I’m enjoying the series already since we’re now on book two?

Yes, we’re back with Stormy Morgan, new witch in the small town of Shadow Hills, Michigan. Well, technically, make that only witch in Shadow Hills since her great-grandmother moved away to Florida years back. Which means that she’s navigating this new power all on her own, while she tries to keep it fairly quiet from her family, the town and her not-quite boyfriend, Hunter.

Overall, the writing is cute and I’m enjoying the characters and continuation of the story and what’s going on with Stormy. Book two actually opens up with a Prologue set in Hemlock Cove, a town over from Shadow Hills with Bay and Thistle Winchester. From reading other reviews, of the first book and this book I had already picked up that this was a series set in a much bigger universe from her other series. This prologue, for those who haven’t read any of her other series, pretty much confirms it. I did a little digging to link that the Winchesters are from her ‘Wicked Witches of the Midwest’ books, of which there are currently nineteen out. Something I might tackle later because I can’t say I’m not interested in reading Bay’s story from the beginning.

Spoilers weaved in and out of my review ahead, so read at your discretion.

I did like this book a little more than the first, though I think part of it is because while it’s frustrating Stormy, Hunter is trying to actually do the right thing by not just jumping into a relationship with Stormy so soon after his breakup with Monica. Stormy as a whole is worried that it’s because she’s not sure if it’s due to Hunter having second thoughts, but he does confirm it’s because he knows he was in the wrong with how he treated Monica and wanted to give it some time before the relationship was more or less rubbed into Monica’s face.

While the town might still be gossiping about them, I actually appreciate him trying to do the right thing and not give the town MORE to gossip about or throw in her face.

As well, Stormy is starting to come to terms with her being a witch, with her friend Sebastian dragging her off to Hemlock Cove to the Winchester’s store in an effort to get her to kind of feel out the family because it’s a well-known not-secret that they are in fact witches.

The speed at which the murders are happening in town since Stormy came back is a little concerning though. We’re only a few weeks after the conclusion of the first book, where someone was murdered behind the family restaurant when one drops dead as she’s leaving from breakfast – the ultimate conclusion for death being poisoned. So again, another murder. (And I’m already partway into book three, which takes place only a few weeks after this one, and again, a new murder) So we’re talking like, three murders in the span of like a month and a half – two months? That’s a LOT, especially for a small town. It asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief – it’s easier to believe the speed of murders were it in a larger town, because more people, but in a town where everyone knows everyone and the largest gossip outside of the murders is that Hunter’s truck was parked behind the restaurant so everyone knows he spent the night at Stormy’s apartment – it takes a decent amount of disbelief for ‘reading reasons’ to wonder why people haven’t fleed this town ages ago if this is how fast people are dropping.

The book had a similar feel of book one, where we’re focusing on Stormy and her magic, or Stormy and Hunter a lot and sometimes it does feel like the murder and the mystery of it get pushed back a little for the other things. I like that magic is starting to take a bigger roll in the books as Stormy is learning about it and of it, though I also feel like if there was a little more time between each book (and murder) there’s some hand waving, Stormy has been learning and so we can speed up the rate at which she’s learning to use it a little more. However, I do feel like we had a little more sleuthing about the murder and into why it happened than the first book, so the conclusion of the who, how, and why came a little more in flow with the rest of the book.

I’d definitely still recommend it if you’re looking for a cute, cozy mystery to read with a hint of paranormal/witchy flare. And I will say with the cameos from the Winchester family, I am curious to read their story from their perspective – or well, Bay’s perspective mostly. Their appearance makes me wish I knew of them before picking up this book, and you can tell there’s a large family dynamic going on among them, but at the same time, I think they were handled well in that I don’t feel that I was missing anything from not reading their books that affected how they interacted with Stormy and her story as a whole.

Book Review: Sinfully Delicious by Amanda M. Lee

03 Friday Dec 2021

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Author: Amanda M. Lee
Publisher: Amanda M. Lee
Series: A Two Broomsticks Gas & Grill Witch Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars

Sinfully Delicious is a Cozy Mystery that follows our main character, Stormy Morgan, as she tries to settle back into her hometown of Shadow Hills, Michigan after having left it for several years. We learn quickly that she left Shadow Hills for college and to become a writer, which she was successful with for the first book.

With the failure of her second book, her publisher canceled her contract and with no prospects at the moment, and little to her name or cash in her bank account, she finds herself back in her hometown.

Overall, Sinfully Delicious was a cute start to a new series. I haven’t read any of Amanda Lee’s books before now, so this is my entrance into her as an author as well and overall I do like what I see. I can confirm I’m already eight chapters into the second book for this series, because I liked it enough to want to continue and see where this story goes with the main character Stormy, as well as her grandfather and her ex.

Spoilers weaved in and out of my review ahead, so read at your discretion.

Stormy is an interesting character, and while she does come off a little whiny at life and her lot in it with having to find herself back in her hometown, living above her family’s restaurant by the grace of her grandfather’s working with her on the rent to lease the place, if you really think about it wouldn’t you be a little whiny if you were in her shoes too? No one expects to make it, break it, and find themselves back at home after college. I will say, I would have liked to see her pull her bootstraps up a little bit more than she did as a whole with being an adult that’s almost thirty, but to be fair and realistic, I’ve seen this attitude first hand so I can’t say it’s not wrong or inaccurate with how people are sometimes either.

Her grandfather is possibly one of my favorite characters in the book. Especially with his disappearing acts whenever Hunter, local cop and Stormy’s ex-boyfriend, comes around to try and talk to him. Especially when he pops back up after Hunter leaves like he’d been at the counter cooking the entire time she’d been looking for him and Hunter was there.

I do have to say I wasn’t thrilled with Hunter as a whole, more with how he was using his current girlfriend throughout the book. It’s both said about him from a friend, as well as he does more or less outright say he knew that it was never going to work with Monica, but he kept her around because he wanted to have a wall or shield against having Stormy come back so he could have a super easy way of keeping Stormy at arm’s length. Which is 100% not fair to Monica to be strung along for almost a month just because he was scared of how it might go between him and his ex-girlfriend. While I didn’t like Monica, I do sympathize with her a little because she was, in effect, a pawn to Hunter when she thought he actually cared about her.

Sinfully Delicious is sold as a Witch Cozy Mystery, and while like I did say I’m into book 2 already, the first book doesn’t do a lot for bringing in the paranormal to the book to tag the first book a witch book. We slowly learn, with Stormy, that she has powers that she accidentally unlocked one night while playing with a Ouija board. By the end of the book it’s clear she has powers and comes from a witch line on her grandfather’s side – and honestly with the way her grandfather seems to be able to pop in and out of sight at the drop of a hat I wouldn’t be surprised if later on in the series we find out that he does have at least a small bit of magic he keeps to himself. But as a whole I wish for a WITCH cozy mystery there’d been a little more WITCH to it.

As well, while there is a death and a mystery, I did find myself feeling like the mystery aspect of it took a large backseat to the romance aspect with the push and pull of Stormy and Hunter as they tried to navigate their feelings for each other.

Maybe I’m just used to the cozy mysteries where the main character has her nose in EVERYTHING when it comes to trying to sniff out the who dun it, with the story focusing on the mystery and the romance being the secondary plot so having it almost flipped left me a little disappointed with the mystery as a whole. But it felt like the wrap-up of the mystery was a little rushed in this book. As a whole, the mystery was wrapped up decently well and it all made sense to the story and plot, it just felt a little like we realized we had gotten to the end of the book and needed to wrap it up so let’s get on that, kind of ending.

But at the end of the day, it’s also a cozy mystery, and it was a cute and cozy read.

Cover Reveal: These Wicked Delights by Jessi Elliott

14 Wednesday Apr 2021

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Title: These Wicked Delights
Author: Jessi Elliott
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
Release Date: June 15, 2021

Synopsis

When eighteen-year-old Emery Leclerc is taken from her home by a man who claims she has
magical powers, she isn’t sure who to call first: the police or the psych ward.

After discovering that the magic running through her veins is the reason her parents died years
ago, Emery wants nothing to do with it. She’d like nothing more than to return to her boring,
small-town life. But left unchecked, her newly awakened abilities prove dangerous. She must
learn to control her magic or risk having it consume her—and dying before making it out of high
school would seriously suck.

Unfortunately for Emery, learning magic isn’t as easy as her new housemates make it seem. As
her frustration grows, she learns that, while she may not want her magic, there’s a Wielder who
does… and the hauntingly familiar and wickedly charming Remington will do whatever it takes
to have it. As Emery battles him, she struggles to unravel the truth about her magical block and
the undeniable pull she feels towards her enemy.

They say the truth will set you free, but for Emery, it could be the very thing that kills her.

Pre-Order

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Meet the Author

Jessi Elliott is a law clerk and author of both young adult and new adult romantic fiction. Her love of writing was born after many years of reading and reviewing books on her blog.

She lives in Southwestern Ontario with her adorable cat, Phoebe. Yes, named after the Friends character.  

When she’s not plotting her next writing project, she likes to spend her time hanging with friends and family, getting lost in a steamy romance novel, watching Friends, and drinking coffee.  

You can find Jessi at www.jessielliott.com, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can join her newsletter to stay up to date on book news and upcoming releases.

Catch Up

12 Monday Apr 2021

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I’m not even sure how we’re almost half way through April, I’m going to be completely honest with you. February and March passed quickly, leaving barely a trace of themselves behind as I stand here blinking at the progression of time. I mean, I know that they passed, my co-author and I worked really hard to finish our first draft by the end of Feb, which we ALMOST met deadline for. We technically finished it on March 1st, but that’s a close enough finish that I’m super happy with it.

March flew past in a blur. Things ramped up at work and I used March as a month to let the draft sit and get some space from, though we’re almost halfway into April and I am reminded that I need to dig into the edits now. I have some edits to make because I had someone read it and note all across it, plus re-reading to see where it needs edits myself as well. But I have faith that I’ll get there, and that we’ll get there, because my co-author is planning to read through and edit the draft after I run through it.

Meanwhile we’re already trying to outline books two and three so they’re all in line with each other from the start. We want to make sure the book plot and the overarching plot of the trilogy work well across the three books. So all the outlining and planning for us. And still pretty on par with our July release deadline we set for ourselves.

Life wise, things have been as they have been. Which is to say, the world is still in a pandemic, we’re mostly still stuck at home. I and my mother have both been fortunate enough to get the vaccine, we both work with hospital staff and doctors, pharmacists and residents who see patients so we were in the 1B section of the population. For those who might be wondering, neither of us had much in the way of side effects. I slept for the day after getting it, she was tired the day after but over all after 24 hours we were both fine. And we’re still making sure to be super careful and follow all the masking and hand washing recommendations.

I’m really glad that the weather has warmed up again, I’ve decided that while I’m working from home I’m going to strive to take like, an hour or two on the laptop and work outside so I can get some fresh air and get out of the house a little while still working. Of course, after the first day of doing this, it’s rained every day since. So, fun times there. And because of the rain, my migraines haven’t been great, though I’m trying a new medication recommended to me, over the counter, and it seems to be helping some. I still have them, but they’re less crawl under my desk and cry these days. So I can work through them so long as I’m in a hat or a non-florescent lit room. Small favor.

Over all I’m hoping to get back to writing on here more consistently. Wish me luck.

I hope, dear readers, that you’re staying healthy and safe.

And time vanishes

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

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So I lost my weekend to the best reason possible. All the words. All the words is definitely a good thing to lose time to though. My co-author on Project Norse and I decided to try and do a 10K words in a day challenge for our respective Saturdays.

As a whole, the challenge went well. We realized fairly early on that our time zone difference made for an interesting addition to the challenge, because with her in the Philippines and me in the United States, being fourteen hours apart means we can’t just boomerang the novel back and forth between us all day. For a good chunk of the writing time, one of us was sleeping while the other was writing.

We made it work though by working on different scenes in the novel at once. Like, I think we were working on four or five different areas to go back and forth with each other, but then also we had a couple areas where one of us took the lead on a certain scene and ran with it.

Neither of us hit 10,000 words on Saturday, but both of us got a little more than halfway through. She finished her 10,000 words on her Sunday. I didn’t, because I ran into a secondary challenge for a long da like that. So back in May 2019 I had my dominant hand’s wrist in a cast. And ever since that accident I’ve had serious problems with my wrist when I over work it.

Well apparently it feels that 6,372 words it decided was over working it. My morning went super well and I was able to get a little over 2,000 words before breakfast, but it had started to ache after that and just get progressively worse through the day as I tried to alternate between resting it and working on more words as I could.

Sunday was pretty much a get nothing done, only rest it day. Also, all the grocery shopping and things I had meant to do that I pushed off from Saturday, so no real other words happened over the weekend. But still, we were able to get about 16,000 words collectively on our novel over the weekend, which is awesome! Since we have that July deadline for publishing, it’s great that we’re able to make so much progress on it as a whole for draft one. As well, when we were awake at the same time and not writing, we were able to flush out our outline to really hone into the timeline of what we what to happen when and how we kind of want it to go so we have guiding things to get us there. Overall, it’s a super productive weekend.

And then yesterday I also realized part of the problem with my wrist is that when I have to work on campus and cover the front desk, that the angle the desk is at compared to the chair is part of my problem. We’ll see if anyone complains about the chair, because I lowered it by like a TON, but I’m hoping since it’s just a little lever, that they’ll just shift it for them when they’re on campus and no one will complain. But the angle was not okay for me anymore. within the first hour of working at the desk my wrist felt like it did after writing 6K words from Saturday, only worse. So yeah, something had to change. I also shifted how the monitors were set on the desk, but those were put back after my shift so no one had to worry about them.

I’m hoping my work week goes fairly quiet as a whole, and I can continue to get words in on the novel. I really want to continue this momentum that we’ve found on getting things done on the different chapters. I’d personally love it if we could have draft one finished by either the end of January or the really early beginning of February so we can get those edits in hard and fast.

Hope your week goes well, readers! And if you did anything you’re proud of, drop a comment and let me know!

Also, if you’re wondering what the image has to do with this post, well, it’s partially just because it’s my kitty and I love him. And partially because that’s legitimately how tired I feel right now.

2021 – Forward We Move

04 Monday Jan 2021

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Can you believe that we’re already four days into the new year? Hopefully your New Years celebrations, even if quiet, was good. Mine was mostly quiet with some Star Trek Discovery watching with my mom and some Among Us with some friends before that.

So far, I’d say my year is progressing well as a whole. I’ve been getting some writing in, but then my co-writer and I have set a very ambitious goal for our joint book so can’t take too many days wtihout touching it.

Let’s just get right into my goals for 2021!

  1. Finish, edit, market, and publish the book I’m working on with my co-author. Our ambitious deadline for it all is July. Six months. We’re that ambitious. But we’re also extremely motivated to get it done!
  2. Finish editing and publish faerie novel.
  3. Finalize and publish at least two shot story/novellas
  4. Read 24 books – this is two books a month. Which, if I carve out a little time occasionally, should be more than doable.
  5. Be more active on both Instagram and Twitter.
  6. Work on both Esty shops to get them up and going a little better.

They’re fairly ambitious goals for the most part, but they’ll keep me going through the year. And they’ll hopefully mean that I’ll get all the things done. Though for the first six months of the year, my main focus is definitely going to be on that first goal. I’m super excited to both work on it but also get it out in the world. We both are. Closer to it’s release, I’ll share a little more details about it.

To keep up with visuals of my progress, be sure to check out my Instagram account! You can find both my Instagram and my Twitter in the left side bar on this blog.

Do you have any goals for the new year? If so, please let me know in the comments below!

Book Review: Rogue Huntress by Thea Atkinson

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

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Author: Thea Atkinson
Publisher: Thea Atkinson
Series: Rogue Huntress Chronicles
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release Date: July 6, 2016
Rating: 4 Stars

Find Rogue Huntress on Goodreads

Brief Synopsis

Shana, an assassin for the Beo pack, has been taken hostage by her foster brother, Caleb, after he kills her father, the alpha. By pack law, Caleb is now the alpha of the pack, but Shana and her brothers are a threat to his leadership and he’ll do what he can to force Shana into submission with the lives of her brothers.

Can Shana fake submission long enough to turn the tables on Caleb and take her pack back? Or will the human mercenary Caleb’s brought in be too much of a distraction that she’ll lose it all?

Review

The book starts off right in the thick of everything. We don’t start before Shana’s capture to get to know any of the characters, but with Shana already captured, trapped in the manor she called home. Caleb, her foster-brother turned captor wants her to submit to him and be his mate, but naturally Shana doesn’t want to mate to the man who had killed her father and put her essentially in a cage, even if her wolf thinks the idea of mating to such a powerful wolf isn’t a terrible idea.

A lot of the backstory about Shana and Caleb comes to us through Shana reflecting back on the past and both who she thought people were coupled with what Shana has gone through to make her the woman she is today. She thinks several times that she’s not sure who this Caleb is, because he wasn’t the man she’d grown up with, trained with, and knew as a brother. Though short of those comments we aren’t ever shown that juxtaposition against the Caleb we see keeping her captor and wanting her to be his. It’s a lot of telling in that respect.

Throughout the book, we’re teased back and forth with Jeb, the human mercenary that helped Caleb take over the pack and had been helping keep Shana captive. He seems cold and calculating, but then there are glimpses where we think we can maybe trust him, that he’ll be there and come through to help Shana take Caleb down and free her pack from his influence.

The worldbuilding that exists is good, because we’re mostly kept at Shana’s manor and the surrounding woods and ravine around it there isn’t too much to have Shana describe or see to us. But the descriptions of the old trees, the roots that in some scenes are large enough for Shana to duck under or around, the bramble bushes with their pricklers are described nicely to be able to visually see what Shana is going through. Even the description of the halls of the large manor as we’re taken through it in the different scenes left me fairly confident I knew about where things were from walking the halls with Shana.

The characters are mostly well thought out. Shana, being the main character feels the most alive, and her inner thoughts, motivations, and drive are well written. She’s very much a well flushed out character. As were the others over all. I don’t know if I’m over thinking it too much, but the only piece of the puzzle I feel like I’m missing is Caleb’s motivation for killing Shana’s father and taking over the pack.

Throughout the book Shana’s telling us that this isn’t the man she grew up with, and yet Jeb mentions at one point that this had been years in the planning. And Caleb didn’t take the pack over by way of the normal trial by combat normally associated with an alpha battle but crept in the shadows and took the wolves he knew he couldn’t beat fairly by deception and blind surprise. It leads well to why some of the pack wouldn’t follow him because it reeks of cowardliness despite the strength Shana’s wolf tells us Caleb has.

While I liked the book over all, it’s the lack of understanding Caleb’s motivation for turning on the people that had welcomed him in as a family for centuries if Shana’s offer of growing up with him is caught correctly is what leaves this more at a four star read. The story does hook you, and I followed it happily. I am also considering picking up the next book to see where Shana goes. However, even after I read it, I still have the serious, but why did he do it, nagging at the back of my head. There were also quite a few noticeable errors in spelling and punctuation being funky that while it didn’t completely pull me out of the story, were distracting.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout in exchange for my honest, unbiased opinion. All thoughts are my own, and were not colored for receiving a free copy.

2020 – Looking back at the year

28 Monday Dec 2020

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So 2020 has been quite the year. I’m not going to rehash what all happened, because let’s be honest. Unless you’ve literally been living in a cave since February, you know, and if you have been living in a cave, well, you’re likely not reading this blog.

It brought a lot of change, which while not great in the how it did, change that will hopefully move us better for the future and the coming year. But that’s not why I’m writing this post. This post isn’t about the future, but about looking back at the year from my goals as an author and seeing where exactly I lined up with them. Maybe digging into a little of the why, though I know a big portion of the why already wtihout needing too much reflection on that part.

So let’s remind ourselves of the goals I’d put into motion via a post on this blog back in January:

  1. Publish at least 2 short stories in 2020
  2. Publish one full-length novel in 2020
  3. Read 50 books in 2020
  4. Relaunch jewelry shop
  5. Sticker shop – create and open

Okay, so let’s go through each and every one of these together and see how I did.

1. Publish at least 2 short stories in 2020? Accomplished! I was able to publish two shorts this year, so woo! go me!

Treasure of the Deep follows Kari, a headstrong Princess that loves to explore the ocean floor for treasure. But her heart ends up at risk when she saves a diver from a shark attack.

On the Clock is a super short read that follows an office tryst.

2. Publish one full-length novel, which did not happen. I’ve got it in editing still, though I am hoping to get some headway in it over the week between Christmas and New Years because I have it off from my 9-5 job that has gotten demanding. – Failed

I can say that I didn’t have the time, or that things came up, which feels true in most senses. But part of it has been I’ve been having trouble focusing on words as a whole. There’s not one thing that I can narrow it down to, but I will say that work has stressed me out more and I’ve found more than one night where I was working on things well past 6pm from home because I needed to make sure something gets done by a certain time. Which after the stress is gone has left me literally wanting to sleep more than anything.

Here’s hoping that getting elbows deep into the editing will mean I can get it polished and out by end of January, maybe mid February at the latest.

3. Read 50 books in 2020 – Failed

I’m gonna be completely honest, this is another fail. I haven’t had time to write, and that also leads to haven’t had time to read much. I think I read like three books this year. I’m in the middle of one that I’m finishing for a review coming Wednesday. But mostly, I’ve been using my time for crafts instead of writing or reading because there’s an instant gratification  of having it done like an hour later and it’s been really fun and made me smile.

4. Relaunch the jewelry shop – Accomplished

This one is technically accomplished. The etsy shop is up and running, though I need to dig into some serious work on getting it back to where it was. A lot of that is involving sitting down and doing a hard inventory and cleaning, but I did get the shop up and it has some items listed on it, and we did make one sale for 2020. So I count it as a win!

5. Start a sticker shop – Kind of accomplished?

So this goal kind of changed after a little while. After really working on stickers, I decided that the time it takes to design them, lay them out, cut them, make sure the print and cut is correct, that it’s time I would rather put into trying to write or read or do other crafts that I enjoy a little more. Like, it was a fun experiment. I made stickers for about two months for my self. I use my cricut machine like crazy still for other things.

But trying to keep up with designs for every week and month is a lot of work. Like full time job work. And if I’m going to put that much work into something, I’d much rather put that time and energy into my author stuff.

Now, I know you’re looking at it though and going, but Meri, you marked it as kind of accomplished. Why is that? Because deciding not to start a sticker shop isn’t technically accomplishing that goal, it’s technically more taking it off the table. Well that’s because while I didn’t open a sticker shop, I did open MBenson Creations on Etsy.

My original jewelry shop is fine gemstone jewelry. Real stones in a sterling silver or 14K gold setting.

MBenson Creations is going to be more of a catchall for my non-fine gemstone jewelry stuff. So I have some acrylic pour necklaces up right now. I’m looking to list a few bookmarks I’ve made, as well as some resin keychains I’ve made. Once I finally get books that are large enough to make into books that can be published on demand I can offer signed copies through this Etsy shop as well. A place for all my creative creations to go up on.

I could have listed them all through the same shop technically, but at the same time I personally wanted a difference in branding for the two. So it made sense to separate them.  But because I did actually create a new shop for that stuff, while not a sticker shop, I count it as an accomplished goal because it revolves around the same goal.

So looking back over, I’ve accomplished three out of five goals. Which in the grand scheme of things, is actually fairly good.

I’ve also jotted down new ideas for some shorts or novels depending on where they go once I get to writing them. I’ve started a joint novel with a friend, and she’s determined to push us to get it out by the end of next year, so goals you’ll be seeing in my next post regarding that.

While 2020 has been crazy, it’s also been a somewhat productive year between the 9-5 stress I’ve been handling. So all in all, while it hasn’t been the easiest year to deal with and learning to work at home has been interesting, more in the I’ve learned that I have problems walking away after I’ve technically clocked out and am not getting paid for the work I’m doing now, I’ve made some good strides as a whole.

Hopefully, looking back on your 2020, you’ll find some bright spots among the cloud that’s been hanging out over the year and can find some reasons to smile, take a deep breath, and move toward 2021 with your head held high and your optimism next to you.

Book Review: A Whisper in the Dark by K.J. Sutton & Jessi Elliott

28 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in New Release, Reviews

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Author: K.J. Sutton & Jessi Elliot
Publisher: K.J. Sutton & Jessi ElliotJessi Elliot
Series: Charlie Travesty
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance
Release Date: April 28, 2020
Rating: 4 Stars

Find A Whisper in the Dark on GoodReads

Growing up and being raised in the world of luxury and comfort, Charlotte Travesty doesn’t know the world that awaits her after her Awakening. Everything changes when she blinks open her eyes and faces her new life. A life that doesn’t include a warm bed and no worries.

The world this book takes place in is vivid in it’s descriptions without feeling like there’s too much information just dumped on you. The characters feel real and three dimensional, which is always something I look for in a new series I might want to follow, and I found myself feeling for Charlotte as her world tilted sideways and everything she new disappeared from her life.

The new take on vampires is interesting, especially the cast system that’s introduced and the world the vampires have created in respect to both themselves, the humans and other creatures, and the halflings feels well thought out and planned. And the plot of this story has me waiting for the next installment already.

Keep in mind, this is the first installment of four for a serial which means it does end on a cliff hanger, but because going into it I knew it was a serial this doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Disclaimer: I did receive an arc of the book in exchange for my honest, unbiased opinion. All thoughts are my own and were not colored by receiving the arc.

A Whisper in the Dark is out now!

Amazon | Goodreads | K.J. Sutton | Jessi Elliott