October Hodgepodge

I don't have a particular theme this month, so I'll talk about a few things going on in my life right now. Hence, the hodgepodge.

I love Halloween decorations, but I’m not great at decorating my house. Luckily, the place where I volunteer, the Assiniboine Park Zoo, excels at decorating. Every October the zoo puts on its Halloween finery and gets ready for Boo at the Zoo, a month-long celebration of all things Halloween, with games, carnival rides and other activities that are fun for kids and families. The best part for me is seeing both kids and adults dressed in costumes!

In other news, I’m in the process of getting my rights returned on five of my books. If all goes well, the rights should be returned to me shortly after the new New Year, and I will self-publish the books. Late last year, when my original publisher sold her company to another publisher, and then that publisher was quickly purchased by a second, larger publisher, I decided it was time to take back control of these books. 

Royalties on these books have been negligible for some time now. Part of the reason is probably the covers. They desperately need updating. As soon as the rights belong to me, I’m going to purchase bright, shiny new covers. In a world where first impressions mean so much, covers matters. 

It’s been in the back of my mind to do something about these five books for a long time. But I was reluctant to act. I felt (and still feel) very loyal to my first publisher/editor because she was the first to see something worthwhile in my writing and give me a contract. I’d been worn down by many years of rejections and was on the verge of quitting, but because of her faith in me, I had the confidence to continue writing. For that I will always be grateful. 

I don’t feel any such loyalty to the new publisher. I think they’re a decent company, but my books would likely get lost in their enormous catalogue. I believe I can do as good a job as they can of promoting my books. Perhaps better, because no one knows and loves them as much as I do. 

While I’m waiting for the rights to revert, I’m giving all five manuscripts a good going-over. These are some of my earliest works and while I still love these stories and am very proud of them, I believe I’ve grown as a writer since I wrote them. I’m going to make these puppies shine! Eventually, I’ll be relaunching them. More news on that in future blog posts.

I'm also writing new books. I’m currently working on a three book, time travel romance series. Books 1 and 2 are mostly completed. If all goes well (cross your fingers for me) I’ll finish the first draft of book 3 by the end of the calendar year. This task will be made slightly easier because for three days at the end of this month I get to go on another writing retreat. It's definitely a banner year for me, retreat-wise. It's not often that I have two retreats in one year. I feel very privileged.

My plan is to self-publish these three new books in 2025. I want to release them closely together so that readers who love the first book can quickly download the next two, and read one after another. At least I hope they're that well received!

I'll speak more about this series, which I'm calling the Twice in a Lifetime series, in future blog posts. 2025 is shaping up to be a very busy year for me, but I wouldn’t want it any other way!

Happy Halloween everyone! What's your favorite thing about Halloween?