Getting Giddy on Books
Hurrah! I sent off my MG spies-and-fairies book to my lovely UK editor yesterday morning, meaning that I have officially hit my final (so far!) deadline of the year. Whew!
This has been a seriously intense last year for very good reasons - in just over ten months, between April 2, 2016 and February 9, 2017, I have three books coming out (Masks and Shadows, Congress of Secrets and The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart), and a significant (30,000-word) freelance project under a pen name! I am SO grateful that this has all come together so amazingly well, but: oof. I am so relieved to have hit my final and most important deadline - the one I'd been most worried about - because honestly, there were a few points this year when I didn't know how I could do it.
WHEW!
And the very best part is that suddenly, all I want to do is READ! For the past several months, my brain has been so intensely focused on my own books-in-progress that I didn't have the energy & attention to read many new-to-me books by other people - all I could manage were comfort re-reads. But now I want to read EVERYTHING!
I devoured Mary Stewart's re-released novella The Wind off the Small Isles earlier this week, which was lovely - and such a treat to get a new-to-me Mary Stewart story after all these years! - and finished Robin Stevens's Murder Most Unladylike (a.k.a. Murder is Bad Manners in the US/CA) yesterday morning. (You can see my slightly spoiler-y review on Goodreads. The short version: I ordered Book 2 about 30 seconds after finishing Book 1! VERY addictive.)
Now I'm a third of the way through Ilona Andrews's Magic Binds (the latest book in my very favorite urban fantasy series ever), really loving it, and also impatiently waiting for today's expected book mail: Robin Stevens's Arsenic for Tea (Book 2 in the Wells & Wong MG mystery series) and my preordered copy of Two Naomis, by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Audrey Vernick, which I've been looking forward to for months.
I also just bought Tracey Baptiste's The Jumbies, which looks absolutely fabulous and has gotten great reviews.
So in other words, I am completely giddy on books right now! :)
Most of my energy for the next few days has to go to cleaning our messy house (because we've been in Deadline Mode for far too long!) before an upcoming kid birthday party. Pretty soon, I'll start writing my own novels and stories again. (Monday, I hope!)
But right now I'm just going to roll around in all the books I can for a while longer. Hurrah!
***
Oh, and since I am posting this on a Wednesday, and Wednesday is Book Quote Wednesday over on Twitter, I might as well share the quote I put up on Twitter today. This week's theme for #bookqw was "mistake," so here's mine from Masks and Shadows:
This has been a seriously intense last year for very good reasons - in just over ten months, between April 2, 2016 and February 9, 2017, I have three books coming out (Masks and Shadows, Congress of Secrets and The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart), and a significant (30,000-word) freelance project under a pen name! I am SO grateful that this has all come together so amazingly well, but: oof. I am so relieved to have hit my final and most important deadline - the one I'd been most worried about - because honestly, there were a few points this year when I didn't know how I could do it.
WHEW!
And the very best part is that suddenly, all I want to do is READ! For the past several months, my brain has been so intensely focused on my own books-in-progress that I didn't have the energy & attention to read many new-to-me books by other people - all I could manage were comfort re-reads. But now I want to read EVERYTHING!
I devoured Mary Stewart's re-released novella The Wind off the Small Isles earlier this week, which was lovely - and such a treat to get a new-to-me Mary Stewart story after all these years! - and finished Robin Stevens's Murder Most Unladylike (a.k.a. Murder is Bad Manners in the US/CA) yesterday morning. (You can see my slightly spoiler-y review on Goodreads. The short version: I ordered Book 2 about 30 seconds after finishing Book 1! VERY addictive.)
Now I'm a third of the way through Ilona Andrews's Magic Binds (the latest book in my very favorite urban fantasy series ever), really loving it, and also impatiently waiting for today's expected book mail: Robin Stevens's Arsenic for Tea (Book 2 in the Wells & Wong MG mystery series) and my preordered copy of Two Naomis, by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Audrey Vernick, which I've been looking forward to for months.
I also just bought Tracey Baptiste's The Jumbies, which looks absolutely fabulous and has gotten great reviews.
So in other words, I am completely giddy on books right now! :)
Most of my energy for the next few days has to go to cleaning our messy house (because we've been in Deadline Mode for far too long!) before an upcoming kid birthday party. Pretty soon, I'll start writing my own novels and stories again. (Monday, I hope!)
But right now I'm just going to roll around in all the books I can for a while longer. Hurrah!
***
Oh, and since I am posting this on a Wednesday, and Wednesday is Book Quote Wednesday over on Twitter, I might as well share the quote I put up on Twitter today. This week's theme for #bookqw was "mistake," so here's mine from Masks and Shadows:
