I tallied my book total for 2023 and came up with about 122 books (ebooks and audio) from Goodreads, the library, Audible and Chirp. For the 49 books that Goodreads knows about, that stat landed me in the top 1% of readers. Any good author also has to be a good reader. I write for myself as the reader, asking if the story makes sense and is it entertaining? Some books are worthy of my reading more than once and that is my goal when I’m crafting a story.
Did you know that reading is good for you? Check out this article. It will tell you that just six minutes of reading will reduce your stress. I get it, and I find it relaxing to sink into a story.
I played around with an Artificial Intelligence program for creating a new author picture for my new genre of urban fantasy. So I used a free AI picture generator and asked for an older urban fantasy writer who was blonde and here’s the image it came up with. I think AI sort of made my request look like a vampire? So are writers, vampires? Weird. It was the strangest set of teeth in a picture I ever seen, and oh by the way, this is the second picture I generated. Needless to say, I won't be using this picture, lol. It was a nice way to rest my writer brain while I made ugly pictures.
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Another snippet from Witch’s Medicine: (unedited)
Finally, she sensed movement nearby and looked over hoping it was friends rather than foes. To her horror, it was a black bear. She had no food on her though the empty protein milkshake container was nearby. She grabbed the sword and made herself big as that was supposed to scare bears away. She also remembered she was supposed to make noise so she started hitting her stethoscope head against Gormon’s sword to make noise. Finally, the bear turned away and ambled off. Whew. Then she thought she heard another sound and looked down to see a puzzled expression on Gormon’s face. He was awake!
She quickly knelt next to him and asked, “What is your name?”
She was assessing him for a concussion or even brain damage.
“I’m Lord Warrior Gormon Mialynn and why are you asking me such a dumb question? What is this thing on me and why were you banging the metal thing against my sword?”
Okay, no concussion with all those questions.
“Michael and you were injured by something he didn’t see. He was able to portal me from the hospital parking lot to care for you and once he had his strength back enough to portal between worlds, I sent him to the fae realm to find Nienna, but they haven’t returned and it’s been at least fifteen minutes. As to why I ask the question of ‘who are you,’ I was checking for a concussion which is a brain injury in humans. Can you move your legs?”
He demonstrated by moving his legs up to ninety degrees and the blanket fell off him.
“What is this for?”
“It’s a warming blanket. You were lying in the snow unconscious and I was trying to keep you warm. I removed your swords from your back to make you more comfortable and so that I would have a weapon until help arrived. I was banging my stethoscope against your sword to scare a large bear away that potentially wanted to eat us.”
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Finally, Evergreen Valley Murder is now available on audio and Long Delayed Justice will be available any day now.
Cheers,
Alec