I got an inter­est­ing phone call the other day. I won’t say much about it, but it made me do a pre­ma­ture happy dance (no, my shoes did not fly off). If even greater news comes out of it though, I’ll be sure to share.

So what’s new? Well I’ve been doing a lot of “think­ing about writ­ing” and then some actual writ­ing, which is great. The last book I wrote was The Ben­son and that was a shorty, so it’s tak­ing me some time to ease back into the writ­ing game. But I have big plans for this year in terms of what I’m writ­ing — lot’s of fun stuff com­ing down the pipeline. You just need to take that first, tiny, but very impor­tant step.

Don’t worry, On Demon Wings is still com­ing. Judg­ing by the com­ments and reviews I’m get­ting, I think I’d have to fear for my life if I didn’t deliver.

There’s also some news about Dark­house — it went through a pro­fes­sional edit and is get­ting a new cover next week which I will reveal here. Per­son­ally, I do like the cur­rent cover and I would love to have that option avail­able if peo­ple pre­fer that cover over the new one. But I know what direc­tion the future cov­ers will go and I’d like all the books to look the same. As for the edit, even though Dark­house was edited a mil­lion times by moi and beta readers…it’s not enough. It never is. And while I can write, edit­ing my own stuff is damn hard. I suck at it. So I extended the cour­tesy to that all impor­tant first novel (Dead Sky Morn­ing and Lying Sea­son have been pro­fes­sion­ally edited), because I want to be proud of it and I want read­ers to be happy. Any­way, I’ll talk more when I reveal the new cover next week, but just a head’s up.

I’ve been doing a lot of read­ing lately. It’s vital as a writer. Though I’ll never be a book reviewer (I don’t write very good reviews and there are lovely review­ers out there who do a much bet­ter job than I ever could), I do like to read and com­pare notes.

This is what I got from the library this month:

The Lantern by Deb­o­rah Lawrenson(I’m a BIG fan of Daphne Du Mau­rier, so I know I’ll love this)
The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross (First foray into Steam­punk)
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake (Obvi­ously I like ghosts, want to see what the fuss is about)
This Dark Endeav­our by Ken­neth Oppel (Cana­dian, FTW)
Before I Fall by Lau­ren Oliver (I read a bit of Lisel and Po, think she’s an amaz­ing writer)

The last few months I’ve been buy­ing Kin­dle books if they are a good deal or free. But I don’t have a Kindle.

UNTIL NOW.

Well, until I dis­cov­ered the Kin­dle app for my iPhone. Sud­denly, all these books appeared in my phone! Man, I sound like my mother when she dis­cov­ered the internet.

Any­hoo, I decided my wee phone would be the per­fect place to try out a lot of self-published works, cheap books, or books I’m unsure of. I LOVE buy­ing books and putting them on my actual shelves, so if there is a book that I love, I will buy the paper­back. But it’s good to try it out first. One thing I’m find­ing with Kin­dle as I wrap my old-fashioned brain around it…I can’t spent over $5 on a book. Some­times you have to if it’s Kin­dle only, but if I’m going to pay over $5 for a novel, I want the phys­i­cal object in my hand. I want it to occupy my home. I want to look at it for­ever. Funny, that.

Here’s what I have on my Kin­dle — I really want this to be the place where I read a lot of GOOD self-published work that might be over­looked. It’s actu­ally quite fun dis­cov­er­ing the indie gems:

Hol­low­land by Amanda Hock­ing
With­er­ing Tights by Louise Ren­ni­son
Descended by Blood by Ange­line Kace
Everblue by Brenda Pan­dos
Ethe­real by Addi­son Moore
Telsa — The Covenant Keeper by Lani Wendt Young
This — A Vam­pire Cure for For­ever by Shaun Roundy (really not a vamp fan but love the title! Please cure us all!)
Stained by Ella James
Dai­mon — A Pre­quel to Half-Blood by Jen­nifer L. Armen­trout
A Job From Hell by Jay­den Scott
Dirty Blood by Heather Hilden­brand
Jenny Pox (The Para­nor­mals) by JL Bryan
Unearthly by Cyn­thia Hand
Angell­fall by Susan Ee
Entwined by Heather Dixon
Jessica’s Guide to Dat­ing the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey

In other news, I AM BANNED FROM BUYING MORE KINDLE BOOKS.

You can fol­low my half-assed reviews at: GOODREADS