Friends, I’m a little behind on updating this week. Sunday rest hit hard and kind of spilled over into Monday. A cold front also moved into Florida yesterday and it put me into “chill the most” mode, after errands were taken care of, of course.
I had a great time at the fall edition of the Merritt Square Mall Con. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the greatest sales event, however, the networking and slowly becoming part of that nerd community balanced out the sales. Not every single event will have phenomenal sales, but the fun part is that those who did buy my books didn’t show up at the mall with the intentions to do so. All in all a win.
What now? Well, nothing. Not exactly nothing, but close. I’ll still be on the social media grind, mostly TikTok these days, ironically when I held out for a long time from joining that platform. I have my thoughts on Meta and it’s still all very downhill as far as I’m concerned with those platforms. This will continue to be my HQ, of course.
Anyway, I used the time between finishing my editing job and Mercury Retrograde going full swing to work through Order of Crows book three (even though I said I wouldn’t, gods help me, I couldn’t stay away). As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve been slowly ticking off obligations and not accepting new ones in my writing world, so I am set to turn on the cruise control and let it all ride for a while. Having made it through my own edits, I will move on to formatting, but not until the latest edits sit for a while. I won’t be putting any pressure on myself to do said formatting, instead I’ll do it when it feels right. I’m also thinking my last read through/edits will be done in an actual proof copy. Like I said, no rush and no pressure as far as that goes.
Also a fun fact, now that I can disengage my brain from editing mode, all my characters will be unfettered from their silence and I expect full retribution for putting them all in a corner for so long. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind to actually write. It has been a while and I don’t count writing time as actual work. I don’t know if that’s strange. But the writing is the easy and fun part, and it doesn’t count as the business side of things.
Alas, I think that’s all for now. Whoever you are, if you’re reading this, I urge you to also take some down time. Even when we think we’re machines, we still need a break. I’m the worst for adhering to that. So if I can do it, you can do it. We’re heading into the holiday season, which is stressful. Give yourself some grace. Happy Tuesday and happy Veteran’s Day with much respect.
Aj Elmore, Author 