Writing: Monthly update for January 2021

Happy February

Hello friends!

It's my birthday month! I'll be celebrating 39 years on the 27th! Hopefully, if I'm allowed a cheat day on my birthday, I'll be celebrating with chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting and vanilla ice cream. I love mashing it all together and making chocolate cake ice cream! It's SO good!

How was your January?!
We went to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri as a sort of mini vacation. Stayed at the cutest little motel. But I think they sold my phone number. Ever since we got back, I get half a dozen or more spam calls a day. UGH!

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We finished watching How I Met Your Mother! I still hate the ending but I forgot how amazing the music in that show is. I've been listening through it while I write!

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Oh! And thanks to How I Met Your Mother and, apparently, every cooking channel on YouTube, I started hardcore craving spaghetti and meatballs.

We drastically changed our diet last summer though, cut out all simple sugars and simple carbs. Black bean spaghetti just wouldn't kick the craving. My sweet husband, who loves to cook, allowed us a cheat day to get it out of my system. Look at this beautiful plate of pasta! He's the freaking best!

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I put off creating my February bullet journal spread until the last minute. Still turned out pretty good, I think! For my mood tracker, I'll draw a new conversation heart every day and color it according to my mood. Forgot to add my key before taking the picture. WHOOPS!

Tell me, how was your February?

💕Anastasia

Read in January:

Totally meant to read more in January. Instead, I read one new book and reread a favorite. LOL Gravity was a good taboo menage with a HEA with one guy. 

Credence is as amazing as I remembered. ♥

What did you read in January? Find any new favorites?

Currently Reading:

These two are on my TBR for this month!

Current Romance WIPs:

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Call of Booty (Saturday Morning Serial, #2) - I typed "The End" on this one! Still need to revise it but that shouldn't take more than a couple of days. It's a shorter story. Roughly 70 pages. More about it's release and cover reveal in the Publishing News section below! 

FYI, those blue triangles with the exclamation points in the picture? Those are the steamy scenes! The red flags are the scenes when the chemistry boils to the surface but they don't follow through.😘

About the story:
A Best Friend's Brother Romcom
(Other tropes you'll love: Friends to lovers, fake dating, roommates to lovers)
  
Josh is starting his dream job as a game developer but his apartment isn't going to be ready for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, he's staying with his sister and her best friend, Gwen. The girl he's had a crush on since they were kids. Gwen needs to get an overzealous co-worker off her back. When Josh volunteers to be her fake boyfriend at her company picnic, things get a little too real.

This story is connected to the Fate series! Katie, from Fighting Fate, is Josh's supervisor at Asteroid Studios. She and Isaac make an appearance.

This is a steamy, 18+ read with a happily ever after!

Love on Blake and Main (Love on Main, #2, Fixer-upper) - I've written more but somehow I'm still only about halfway through the first full draft of this one. Now that I'm done with CALL OF BOOTY, I can focus on this. Goal is to get it done before the end of February to gear up for an April release!

Publishing news:

LUKE AND HALEY ARE LIVE!

"This was a fantastic read that I enjoyed! It had a great balance of romance, hot sexy times, and swoon worthy moments. Simply put, this was just a great book to curl up with! I loved Luke and Haley and can't wait to see what's next for this series.

Definitely check out Luke and Main! You'll be glad you did! " - The Romance Reader Gal review (@the_romance_reader_gal on Instagram)

READ FOR F*R*E*E WITH Kindle Unlimited - https://books2read.com/u/bzg2Lj

BLURB:

There’s always been a place for her in the back of my mind. My first crush. The one woman no other will ever live up to, because no relationship will be as good as the one I lived out in my head, with her.

Haley Reed doesn't know I've been in love with her from the moment I saw her. I was the new kid. A lowly freshman that never had a chance at catching the attention of the senior head cheerleader. Now, the owner of the local cafe, my chances aren't much better with the billionaire’s ex-wife.

Having the odds against me is a good excuse not to go after her. However, our meddling friends disagree. Despite their best efforts to push us together, it’s not until we're alone, in the middle of nowhere, that everything changes.

Drunk and frisky, Haley confesses to having dirty dreams about me and tries to make one come true. I stop it before it goes too far but now that I know how she feels, I don’t know how much longer I can keep my distance.

It turns out, a little distance (and some flirty texting turned sexting) is what we needed to bring us together.

How ironic that a text message is all it takes to tear us apart.

This is a steamy, adult read. Contains swearing, some other woman drama but no cheating and a HEA with no cliffhanger! Read all the way to the end for a bonus scene that bridges Luke's book with Blake's!


LOVE ON LUKE AND MAIN (universal link) -> https://books2read.com/u/bzg2Lj
Amazon.com US -> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RZFD36K

Add the series to your Goodreads TBR today!
Love on Luke and Main ➜ https://bit.ly/3m04Yvw
Love on Blake and Main ➜ https://bit.ly/33cq3LR
Love on Oliver and Main ➜ https://bit.ly/2UX3PJ7
Love on Apollo and Main ➜ https://bit.ly/2IWmgeS

Newsletter Exclusive Announcement:

The Saturday Morning Serial will return on Saturday, February 6th, 2021 with CALL OF BOOTY.

Check out that cover! I spent the better part of a day putting it together and am thrilled with how it turned out! I even made it my phone wallpaper 🤣

LAST CALL FOR RUNNING INTO TROUBLE
With the start of the new edition of the Saturday Morning Serial, comes the end of the last edition.

The download for RUNNING INTO TROUBLE will expire on Monday, March 1st, 2021. You have all of February to get it for F*R*E*E before I publish it on Amazon in March!

SIGN UP TODAY!

Word Count:

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My goal for 2021 is to be consistent. Starting with writing at least 500 words every day. I think I averaged that in January!

Binge my books!

The first full novel in the LOVE ON MAIN series is Live!
"Small town matchmaking shenanigans, which cracked me up. Slow burn, but when these two finally give in...whew. A sweet epilogue and a hea. Next book please. #SubtleLikeAMackTruck" - BookSnobSue Review
Link to Amazon listing

Reunited is a standalone prequel novella to the Love on Main series!
Link to Amazon listing

After you read Fake to Fate, download this box set and read the rest of the Fate series!
Link to box set

Sharing is Caring

PROMOS END FEBRUARY 28th

The End

Thanks for reading! Keep moving forward!

If you'd like to chat with me, please join my Facebook reader group! I would love to see you there♥

If you'd like to chat with me, please join my Facebook reader group! I would love to see you there♥

Writing: Monthly update for November





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Annnddd... we have another cat. We think she was dumped outside of town. She followed my husband home from a city council meeting. We called around and found out she'd been hanging out at city hall for several days. No one was looking for her and the shelters were all full. The snow and freezing weather was coming, so we took her in. Meet Harper! She's about 5 months old now and about 5.5 pounds. And a real stinker! We love her so much!




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She's getting along great with our nearly 3 year old Cricket...





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And the cantankerous 10 year old Caillou wishes the youngsters would leave him alone!





November didn't slow down after the cat drama.

Thanksgiving festivities kicked my butt! Hopefully all of you in the states are recovering better than I did. 

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December 1st, we put up our little Christmas tree. We have two cats who haven't yet experienced Christmas. So, we thought we'd use the little tree to train them. Already found ornaments on the floor and little Harper is a chewer. lol Here it is all lit up!


Now for the writing...

Current Romance WIPs:

FACING FATE - After last month's drama, I'm happy to announce this is ready for revisions! I'll be getting to it soon but I would first like to finish drafting the book I'm currently writing. More about that below. 

INFINITELY ENDLESS (aka Plus One) - The (VERY) rough draft of this is done! It will need a lot of revisions. I'm not sure if I will do this one after FACING FATE or wait because it is so rough. That's what happens when I take long breaks in my drafting process rather than writing straight through.

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RUNNING INTO TROUBLE (an age gap romance) - Started drafting this toward the end of the month. I flipping love it! Daniel and Riley are quickly becoming my favorite characters. I'm roughly a quarter of the way through the rough draft. Hoping to finish it before Christmas!

Here's a little blurb: He’s trying so hard not to get involved with a woman half his age but when all she wants to do is help make his father-daughter dinner the best it can be, how can he say no?!

Word Counts:

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November was better! Though, can you see the impact Thanksgiving had on me? lol

Total for the month was 20,667! Not NaNoWriMo but still a solid month!




Publishing News:

Nothing to report. I'm hoping to publish FACING FATE in late January/early February. Will keep you updated!

Read in November:

Warning I wish I'd had: Sweet Liar is NOT a standalone. It's a part 1 of 2. Literally only the first half of the story. I was quite upset when I finished and found this out.

Magnificent Bastard is a lot of fun though. :D





Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy the first two books in the FATE series today!

Thank you!

Writing: Monthly update for October

Current Romance WIPs:

FACING FATE - Oh, the drama... So, this book had been moving at a snail's pace even though the word count kept rising. I mean, just look at my word count tracker for October! It wasn't until October 30th that I realized why I couldn't find the end of this book.

I'd already passed it.
Here's what I posted in one of my writing groups after it happened...

"I wanted to scream last night but was in a library. Don't think they would have appreciated it. So, I've been frustrated with how long my current WIP is taking to finish. Turns out, I blew past the ending! UGH!!!!!

I sat down last night and wrote a sort of synopsis for the book, ignoring the fact I'd already written most of it. I allowed myself to let things happen that felt right, whether they existed in the book already or not and to come out in whatever order they flowed naturally. Doing this, I discovered I was chasing the wrong ending, things were happening out of order, and I'm missing some key character and plot moments. 😭😭😭

On the upside, I've already written the climax of the story. So, to "finish" the book, I just need to back up and write the resolution.

Downside, this thing is going to need some serious revisions and I'm probably going to lose several thousand words in the process."

As of, November 2nd, I'm done drafting FACING FATE! And now I'm going to take a break from it for a couple of weeks.

INFINITELY ENDLESS (aka Plus One) - This is what I'm drafting while I take a break from FACING FATE. It's coming along nicely! Hoping to finish it this time around.

Word Counts:

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Got a lot of words written in October, but didn't make a whole lot of progress. UGH!

November will be better!




Publishing News:

Nothing to report!

Read in October:

FYI: Most of these are short reads. Just Roommates is the only full novel on the list. A couple are more like teasers, which I didn't know going into them (Rock Hard, Snowed in with the Ranger, and Lightning Strikes)






Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy the first two books in the FATE series today!

Thank you!

Writing: Monthly update for July

I finally fought my way out of revisions!

Current Fantasy Romance WIPs:

So, I included this in my update last month without considering whether or not readers of contemporary romance would also be interested in fantasy romance.

If you wouldn't mind, I'd love your help deciding whether or not I should publish Fantasy Romance under a different name.

Please respond to the following questions with your thoughts.

Do you only wish to read contemporary romance and would not like to get updates about fantasy romance? Or would you like to know about everything I write, regardless of genre?

Thanks in advance for your input! 

Current Romance WIPs:

FIGHTING FATE - I DID IT! I finished revising! Today, I will contact my beta readers and ask for feedback to be returned within two weeks. After that, I'll revise again, considering their feedback. Then, it's off to ARC readers before publishing!

Release day is not set yet but I expect it will be mid-September.

Can't wait for you all to read Katie and Isaac's story! They fought me just as much as they fought the feelings they had for each other. But it was worth it in the end! I hope you all love them as much as I do. 

PLUS ONE - I will pick this up again in about a week. My family and I are going on a trip to Minnesota next week to an author signing event for the release of Mary E. Pearson's new release, Vow of Thieves and I have to finish reading her ARC!

Word Counts:

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You'd think this was a drafting month, not a revision month based on those word counts! 

I suppose it kind of was. I added over 20K words to the "first" draft, that was really more of a zero draft.

Really excited Fighting Fate will be a full novel now that it's over 50K words!

 

Publishing News:

Nothing to report on Fake to Fate.

Fighting Fate should come out Mid-September. I'll let you all know the official release day when I know it and include a pre-order link!

Read in July:

I feel like it's worth noting, this book was a gift from my wonderful, supportive husband. 

Thanks for reading. Keep moving forward!

Buy FAKE TO FATE! Ebook and paperback are on Amazon now. Thanks!

If you would like more frequent updates, please follow me on Instagram. If you're as impatient as I am, you can get some of the information in my updates when it happens rather than having to wait for the monthly update!