Laurel Quinn's Blog

You know those nightmares where you're surrounded by things you don't necessarily like, and as you try to run away, you're running in slo-mo and gaining 0 ground?

I've lived that nightmare. In the form...of kittens. It's not that I don't like the poofy little fluff-balls, I'm just a dog kind of girl.

Backstory: On May 23, our outside (very friendly) cat Ziggy had three kittens. Since their birth, I've been involved in their tiny lil lives, because Ziggy=awesome cat.

The next day, we adopted a kitten to be an indoor boy, because we live in a rural area and mice and bugs are a thing.

Fast forward to June 16th, that's 24 days after the kittens were born, I discovered that poor Ziggy had fallen to a coyote's attack. I checked on the babies, who were fine, but hungry. Naturally, I began the arduous process of bottle-feeding, which is a lot harder than the Youtube tutorials make it out to be.

Four times a day, I wound up dropper-feeding these fluff balls, and wouldn't you know it, eight days later, Ziggy's sister, also an outside cat, named Squiggles, has HER kittens! And there's five of them! All-in-all, we have ten cats. TEN. CATS. My husband tells me I'm well on my way to becoming the Reluctant Cat Lady.

Everyone is doing great, amazingly. Our inside boy is named Toulouse. The three orphan kittens are named Marie (a white fluff ball), Berlioz, (a solid black kitten) and O'Malley, (a tiger-striped boy). They all have the bluest eyes, and they meow/squeak and run/waddle to me, and I kind of love it.)

They're weaning from kitten formula to kitten wet food, and they devour it!

Our dogs, we have an American Bull-Dog (Mister) and a Pittie Princess (Violet), ,have taken to making sure the kittens stay clean with lots of licks, and though the indoor cat, Toulouse, has declared himself dominant, we know who's the boss. Mister has been on the receiving end of tail-attacks as Toulouse grows bigger and cattier, (pun absolutely intended) and Violet is simply putting up with the kitten's mock-attacks until he learns to find a different playmate, too. I have the best dogs in the world.

So because of all of my fluffy distractions, now only have I not been able to write consistently, but I haven't been able to do much marketing, either. (Not that I'm very good at that to begin with...)

Regardless, The Firstborn Daughter is available as both kindle edition AND paperback, as well as free to read with the Kindle Unlimited subscription (which, if you're not taking advantage of that, what are you doing???) The sequel is in progress, I'm 15,000 words in, and on Chapter Ten!

What can I say about it so far? My heart aches for Sam because of Harper.

That's it. That's all I'm going to say about it or I'm just going to copy & paste Chapters 1-10 right here right now!

Back to writing!

~Laurel

...was a while ago. Like, April 27. Oh well, better late than never.

I made the decision to start the sequel ASAP, as to not get all distracted like I do. I'm on Chapter 3. #progress. The plan is to keep the momentum of the narrative rolling, and as soon as it's done and ready for publication, (fingers crossed for the end of 2020...) I'll plug a sneak-peek into the end of the e-book as well as a link to purchase the sequel.

But let's back up a little...

72 hours prior to April 27th, almost to-the-hour, I was waiting for bread to finish baking and I made the decision, just like that, to publish. My book had been publish-ready for months, I'd just been chicken and assumed that the virus/pandemic/social distancing was going to kill any sales. (That's not been the case, fortunately.) I uploaded the e-book and the cover with virtually NO issues. I call that a win. Take that, Corona.

I also made the decision to enroll my book in KDPSelect, which means that for the #KindleUnlimited subscribers, it's free to read!

On to the release! For now, until I approve the physical proof copy, Kindle version will be all that's available, but as soon as paperback is ready, I'll update everything!

I'm  pleased with the cover, to be honest, mostly because it's getting away from the 'normal' urban fantasy book covers. Google image 'UF book covers' if you want to know what I mean.

Here's the link to The Firstborn Daughter, just click or tap the link and it'll open up in a separate window. Take advantage of the 'Look Inside' feature, especially if you're not subscribed in Kindle Unlimited. Read a few pages prior to purchase!

Of course, if you do enjoy it, please support me and my well-being and leave a review, it means the world to every Indie Author when a reader takes the few minutes to say how much they've enjoyed something you've created. Still waitin' on those reviews...

And while you're still here reading, enjoy a quick teaser about the book!

Despite her telepathic abilities, Harper Chase is blindsided by her father’s sudden decision to sell the family business, as well as her magic.

When the handsomely scruffy recipient, Sam, swoops in to make the purchase behind his father’s back, he offers Harper’s magic back to her in the form of an ancient, magic-laced kiss. Neither of them realize the dangerous, magnetic bond that is forever woven between them, magically and emotionally.

When Sam’s tyrannical father realizes his son’s deceit, he abducts Harper and terrorizes her with dark, manipulative magic, willing to do anything and kill anyone who stands in his way.

Unfortunately for Harper and Sam, he isn’t the only one.

Please keep in the back of your noggin that the sequel is being written as I write this, all I have to do is swipe over to my other desktop page and continue tapping away on the keyboard.

By the way, are you following me on Goodreads? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Have you plugged in your email to get the maybe-monthly updates from me? (I hate getting spam, so take to heart that I won't do that to you.) Feel free to follow me on any or all of them, between memes I like to post pics of my dogs, staring longingly at the bunnies in the yard.

Back to writing!

~Laurel

Nearing the end of April, at that. Seriously, where'd March run off to? Nowhere, because it's been quarantined like the rest of us. I had a list of topics to ramble on about for March's blogpost...but they vanished in a pile of 5th grade schoolwork, and they haven't been seen since. I gave a very non-committal shrug to April. Fifth graders are underestimated nowadays, *back in my day* we didn't have the capabilities for online learning, and while it's absolutely fantastic that my kid can continue building his brain power, I've come to the conclusion that I am NOT smarter than a fifth grader, and I'm okay with it. My son is learning about common denominators, plural forms of verbs you'd think were typos: "oxen, leaves; geese." I don't like it and English is my native language. And I'm a writer. *Side note: there's a massive fly buzzing perilously close to my face, and if this never gets posted it's because I was gravely injured trying to kill it. I've named it Jeff Goldblum II. But hey, guess how much writing I've gotten done with SOOOO MUUCCCHHH free time on my hands? Here's the thing, it only takes three hours to do the daily 'homework' from my kid's school, and he doesn't exactly need supervision to make sure he does it. Plus practicing for band (trombones are coooool!) and P.E. But, he doesn't have to wake up at 5:30am to get ready for school anymore, and lunch is our favorite time of the day (other than 5 o'clock). I don't have the downtime that I used to have to sit down at my desk and write. Also, my laptop is doubling its duty for school, so I'm letting it rest. Yeah, that's it. It's been...fun/horrifying/amazing/frustrating to spend every day with this preteen boy, and while we're respecting the social distancing thing, living in a rural area, we go outside whenever the weather is nice! But, back to my lack of writing. I think I'm a little burned out at the moment. I've been scribbling down some good ideas, prompts, sequel plots, but to actually sit down and focus? Nah. Here's the thing; I sent out my most-recently-finished book to a handful of readers, two or three came back with thumbs up across the board, (the rest ghosted me, whatever) but is now the wisest time to publish a book, and successfully market it at a time when so many are financially strapped? A standalone novel, at that? (For now, anyway, I have a sequel planned, but I use the word 'plan' very loosely. About as loose as the nutritional value of my kid's lunches now. So since I'm not writing, we've recently been gifted a full-size keyboard, so the boy and I have been fiddling around with it. Naturally, the first thing he learned was the theme song to the Office. I'm proud. And there it is. Not a whole lot happening in my neck of the woods. Quarantine has officially been extended until the end of May, and unofficially until my kid graduates high school. Send help and hard seltzers. (Another side note: Truly brand hard seltzers are amazing, specifically, the pomegranate flavor.) Quarantining with the fam and my snacky-snacks, not writing, barely playing the piano, and avoiding the intimidating pile of dishes; I'm signing off for another month or so! ~Laurel

I’ve been a bit...preoccupied lately, so my end-of-the-month post has been delayed a bit. Here’s why. I'm still stuck on Chapter 7 of the sequel to my first-...

Now that AC/DC is firmly planted in my brain, I'll share the mountain peak I managed to squirm up. For the entire month of January, I've struggled with getting my book into IngramSpark. Between the e-book interior, e-book cover, physical interior pages, and physical cover, I was nearing the end of my rope. Because I'm a newbie to this thing called self-publishing and because I had exactly forty-two dollars to my name, I made my own cover...which was a learning experience in and of itself. Long story short, my paperback was a hot mess. Once I'd finally formatted the cover to a pdf format within the (handy) template guide, I received my approval proof! Diving into the attached doc, I realized that my interior text's formatting was set at letter size...instead of 6x9. Which meant it needed to be fixed. Which meant my cover needed to be done. Again. I took a week off of crazy-cover-time, as I so fondly dubbed it, and focused on a design-focused gig and my kiddo's upcoming birthday plans. But now that I'm back to the normalcy, I buckled down and reformatted my book cover...because if the page size is smaller, you're gonna have a ton more pages, which means the spine is going to widen. I submitted the new-new-new cover, I think my title name for it was something along the lines of "Cover_edition_5.3", and I received the email notification to approve the new proof, last night. But I'd already started the shut-down-electronics-and-go-to-bed process, (sleeping is my favorite right now) which meant I had to wait until 8am to check out the proof. With a truckload of apprehensive insecurity and impatience. Needless to say, the proof looks (now) amazing, what with everything where it's supposed to be, and I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out. I approved the proof and now I have to wait 3-5 business days for the final-final okay. *cross that one off the to-do list* I first dipped my toe in the pool of Amazon's KDP, swam out to Smashwords, and went deep-sea diving into IngramSpark. Holy Guacamole, I love IngramSpark. For my first time navigating it, I'm so glad that the proofing process was so arduous, because it helped me catch the errors that wold have killed me and my bank account. I'm hoping when I get the sequel to Casting Out the Darkness finished and ready for publication that it'll be much less painful for me, especially now that i kinda-sorta know what I'm doing. Kinda. ~Laurel

I hate New Year's Resolutions. Simple as that. But, the chance to wipe the slate and start anew is appetizing, to say the least. A week (or so) ago, I received an email from my (former) website host, informing me that my domain was going to expire. Oh no! I checked the price to renew and nearly spat out my coffee, nearly, because I don't waste coffee, and weighed the decision. I didn't even have that much in my writing account! (That's the bank account I keep all of my pennies, nickels, and dimes...and royalties in.) I had a few options; ask for a loan (from family/friends) and renew a website I rarely used and cross my fingers that I'd earn some unexpected royalties to pay them back, or be done with it and find another route to advertise my books. If you're reading this, I chose Option #2. Choosing a free website means I can dedicate my time, effort, and cash into furthering my books, especially if I'm so new to the publishing game. I've found this in Wix, and hopefully this venture will be a wiser decision than the other. *Note; I was happy with my website prior, except for the price, but I just didn't use it nearly enough to justify the cost. On to the Resolution! My first novel I self-published in March of 2019, and hindsight bit me hard. I should have done so much more, so much differently, etc, etc. Now that I have another novel almost-ready to publish, I'm forcing myself to wait and do the things I wish I would have done now, rather than later. The more you know, right? Not only am I being ridiculously patient with that novel, but I'm actively working on the sequel to my first published book. My writing resolution is to have it done by the end of the year. I'll be posting sneak-peeks, sample chapters, and cover reveals here and there, and I'll *hopefully* be further along with the publishing journey than I anticipate. But for now, I should be writing. Thanks for reading, and if you've TL;DR'ed me, Quick Recap: writing is hard.