Down the Rabbit Hole

Happy Wednesday!  We're so close to the end of this year, so you know what that means! More lists of all the things I'm excited about in the coming year!! All the books and movies and goals and things I'm excited to do in 2021.  Books I'm Looking Forward to in 2021:  Shadow by Kara Swanson  Cover and blurb coming soon. Releases July 21, 2021 Yesterday and Long Ago by Jenni Sauer  Cover and blurb coming soon. Not sure when it'll be released.  Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 9  Cover and blurb coming soon. Releases November 2021  The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by Victoria Schwab  A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget. France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a yo...

 Happy Sunday!   We have a few days left of 2020! Raise your hand if you're so ready to walk into 2021 and leave 2020 behind! *raises hand enthusiastically* In all seriousness though, I don't think 2020 was a bad year. It was a hard year. An unexpected year. A tiring year. But a lot of good things came out of it for me too.  But before I get into that, I gotta list off my top books of this year cus books must always come first. ;)  Come Matter Here by Hannah Brencher  I started the year off with this book and I'm so glad I did. I recommend this book to literally anyone and everyone. It was so good, so full of wisdom and encouragement and really touched my heart and changed the way I view being where my feet are. I can't wait for her next book Fighting Forward to come out in January!  The Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater  There is something about this series that I fell in love with instantly. Maybe it was the werewolves or the sim...

 Happy Wednesday!  In Luke 2 there’s a story about some shepherds chilling in the field at night watching their herd. I think we all know this story. An angel of the Lord appeared to these terrified shepherds and announced to them that “today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” He told them where they could find him. Heavenly hosts showed up and sang a praise to God and then when the angels left the shepherds pulled themselves together and went to go find baby Jesus.  I was going to talk about the immediacy of the shepherds. How they up and left their herd and dropped everything to seek out Jesus right in that moment once the angels left. But a sermon from Moody I had listened to about Psalm 23 came to mind as I was thinking about this story of the shepherds. The pastor was talking about Psalm 23 through the lens of David who had written it and who had been a shepherd himself. He talked about how God is our shepherd and how sh...

  Happy Wednesday!  "This year is going to be a great year."  "This year is going to be the best year."  "I just have such a good feeling about this year, 2020 is going to be really good, I can feel it."  Those are all things I said in December last year and January of this year. Literally to anyone who would listen I was telling them that 2020 was going to be a great year. A really good year. So many good things are going to happen this year. 2020 was just going to be so amazing. I believed those words down to my bones. There wasn't a hint of hesitation or doubt in me when I said them. I was 110% confident that 2020 was going to be the best year.  So, you can understand why I laugh and smile at it now. I feel like I personally jinxed 2020 by going around telling everyone how great of a year it was going to be. When this year first started getting crazy though and then crazier and crazier, I was confused. I could still laugh at the irony of how sure I ...

 Happy Sunday!  I know this isn't the usual day I post stuff but today is special! Five years ago on this day, I hit publish on Weapon Icean. I published my debut novel using Kindle Direct Publishing and fulfilled my dream since I was a little kid to be an author. It's an amazing feeling and I'm really proud of myself for taking that leap and hitting publish. I can't even believe it's been five years.  Since publishing Weapon Icean, I've published the sequel to it (Project Hellion). I've published a short story collection and a children's book. I've published an entire trilogy and two novellas. Without Weapon Icean, I wouldn't be where I am today. Without all the things Weapon Icean taught me, I wouldn't be slowly but surely getting to where I want to be with self-publishing. I'm so thankful to Nanowrimo 2014 that motivated me to write the first draft of Weapon Icean and I'm thankful for Weapon Icean in general, for getting me through...

Happy Wednesday! In November I was listening to one of Nate Buzz’s Palm Sunday lessons on his Instagram about Luke 1:5-25 about how John the Baptist was foretold to his parents. One thing he talked about really stuck out to me. Zechariah and Elizabeth both came from very prominent families with rich Biblical backgrounds. Elizabeth descended from Aaron (an Old Testament priest) and Zechariah descended from the priestly division of Abijah. Nate Buzz brought up the point that since they came from such important Biblical family lines it would have been extra important to them to carry on their families’ legacy through a child. The fact that they couldn’t have a child within this context made it even more heartbreaking and prominent within the story. And yet, despite the fact that they had probably prayed for a child many times throughout their lives, yearned for one and even been expected to have one to carry on their family name and were never able to conceive, Luke still called them “r...

Happy Wednesday everyone! And happy December and Merry Christmas! 😁 I used to put a lot of weight into the things we do for Christmas. The “traditions” or the check list. Go see the zoo lights, make gingerbread houses with friends, go to the Christmas Market, go to a light show, decorate cookies together for Santa. Certain Christmas movies needed to be watched. It all had to be done in December and it all had to be done before Christmas. And if it didn’t happen... it wasn’t right and didn’t feel like Christmas. Am I the only one who gets like this around Christmas time? You have to do all the Christmas-y things for it to feel like Christmas and when it doesn’t happen it just... is kind of sad and doesn’t feel right?  I realized I was putting waaay too much stock into the things we did for Christmas last December. I can’t remember if it was last Christmas or the Christmas before that, but I do remember telling my mom how I was frustrated that we weren’t doing all the things and jus...

 Happy Tuesday everyone!  Unearthed is finally out today!  I wrote the first book in this trilogy last year during VBS week at my church. It was a super busy week for me. I was helping watch the little ones and was up early every morning and didn't get home till 4 in the evening. Pretty much it was like working a regular job for a week straight and I realized... I am not a fan of regular jobs or being gone from home for the entire day and not getting home till 4. But during that week and the week after that I wrote Wayward. I wanted to test myself by writing Wayward, to see if I could write a marketable good old fashioned YA paranormal romance. Turned out I could. The first draft of Wayward was super clean and I got it published within a month or two of writing it. It was the first book of mine I had published that got actual attention. People were sharing the cover reveal and congratulating me on release day. People actually knew a little about the book before it was pub...