Finally-finally-for-real-finally!

“It’s the final countdooown! *nana nah nuh … nananuh nuh nuh* (or something)”

TWO WEEKS from today is the submission date for Ranger’s Odyssey! I finished my final-final-for-real-final draft of my manuscript yesterday, 142 days after I finished my first draft. I changed the formatting so it was ready for submission, cropped the illustrations to the proper size, finalized my cover text, and came up with detailed notes for content evaluation and book design … and I gathered everything into a zipped folder so it can taunt me for fourteen whole days.

We’ll get there. Eventually. Maybe. Ugh, it’s so far away. How is it that the closer I get, the further away it seems? I do have one more thing left for Ranger’s Odyssey—my author photo. I took my author photos over the long weekend, with the help of my wonderful husband. Now my dilemma is which photo to include in my book. I would prefer not to have my face in my author photo for various reasons. Reason one shows how lame I am: I like the idea that if you can’t see what I look like then it could be your story too. Yeah, yeah, I know. But really.

My idea was with the Scottish dirk and the ominous peek around the tree—a centuries-old tree in our back yard. I loved the idea of looking like an adventurer for my author photo. We decided to take a few crouching pictures and ended up with a gem there as well. I cannot decide which is better, and I even polled the idea and ended up even on both sides. I’ll probably deliberate on it for two weeks and then flip a coin. Unless there’s some sort of rule about having a weapon in my picture. We’ll see.

That should be it for Ranger’s Odyssey. I’ll just be waiting for content evaluation, waiting for design, possibly tweaking some illustrations if they look funny after design, waiting for a release date, and waiting for my author copies to arrive. So during all this waiting and waiting and waiting, there’s a few things on the docket. I’m powering ahead on Realm of Chaos, and I had a sudden burst of inspiration this week. I planned out every series within the main storyline of the Tales of Ambergrove. Ten series and five standalones so far. I’m so excited to get it all put together. I have so many ideas for the story, and I think you’ll love them! I do, anyway!

I had more things to say, but honestly I’m just so excited I’d just be incoherently blabbering, so I’ll end it here. My next blog will be after submission to the publisher! Until next time, adventurers!