Bad habits

I have a bad habit of never updating this blog.
I have a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them.
I have a bad habit of never actually doing self-promotion.
Here's me trying to do at least one of the above.

My twins are now almost 3 and my daughter is almost 6, so I'm starting to get some writing time again. I've also really been pushing artwork (and I am available for commissions as well as some of my stuff being available for sale! - check out the Contact Me page to see my art insta).

In fact, one of the most exciting things that has happened to me recently is that I got to go to a USWNT Victory Tour soccer game and watch some of the most badass women on the planet play an amazing game, and then afterwards, thanks to Rose Lavelle, I was able to deliver some artwork I'd drawn for them to them.

They even posted a picture of Rose Lavelle and Emily Sonnett holding my pictures on the official USWNT Instagram

That doesn't mean, that I've abandoned my writing, though! It's taken a bit to get back into finding the flow, but I'm happy to say I have some new projects in the works and some older ones have been burrowing around in my brain demanding attention as well.

I know this isn't a huge update, but I figured I'd put one out there anyway.
xx

It's been a while...

Life has a way of surprising you, even with your best laid plans. Here, I drew a comic about how it works last October:

When I last updated this blog, I was the mother of one with no history of twins from either side. Today, I am the mother of three, including 1 1/2 -year-old twin boys. To say that my free time is limited is a bit of an understatement.

Mom is my full-time gig right now and writing has very much had to take a back-burner. I miss being able to write as much as I want, but my life is full of new adventures and my kids certainly spark more than their fair share of ideas. In fact, I'm keeping documents with funny stories on each of them in the hopes of someday turning it into either blog or book material.

While most of my big writing projects are on hold, I have completed a Halloween-themed children's book (that so far doubles as a coloring book), that I wrote for my daughter and have shared with her class at school, as well as some friends, and will be looking into wider distribution/sales at some point. This is my daughter's copy that she has gleefully colored in:

I also have a few short stories in the works, and am looking into setting up an anthology with a few writer friends of mine.

I've also begun some other creative pursuits, namely drawing. If you're interested in checking out my work, I have linked to my art instagram on my "Contact Me" page.

Last, but not least: I am no longer the only published author in the family. In fact, my dad, Doug Adcock, launched his second novel today! He writes historical fiction spy novels - action, adventure, and tension all in a meticulously researched historical setting. Check out his books Rebellion and the sequel, Massacre!

Family Trip Inspiration

Saw this beauty on our family vacation a few weeks ago. Can't help thinking about Mesatawe and the other wolves from the Dúlra coven trilogy! In Hunting Trinity, you'll get to meet even more of the pack and get to know them a lot better. 

Follow me on Tumblr!

Hey, everybody! I'm now on Tumblr! Follow me there to get a sense of what inspires me, as well as hints at possible settings for future works, some general fun, and exclusive excerpts from works in progress!

Speaking of works in progress, I've just updated that page, so feel free to check it out for an update. I've got some exciting new ideas brewing.

And now, I'll leave you with a link to a snippet of an idea: The 4 Horsewomen of the Apocalypse: Death

Have an awesome day!

Get Faith's Demons on Kindle for only $0.99 for a Limited Time

My little girl is now one, and she's letting me get a little bit of writing done from time to time during nap time, so in honor of that, I'm going to be offering the Kindle edition of Faith's Demons for only $0.99 from Monday, February 23rd, 2015 to Monday, March 2nd, 2015. 

There's never been a better time to get it or share it with a friend or loved one!

Writing again!

This is apparently what I need to do in order to get some writing done these days. Ideas have been banging around my head again, so today, after over six months without working on my WIPs, I finally decided to try to work on one of them. Writing while being a stay-at-home mom is definitely more complicated than I had anticipated, and finding the time is harder than I'd imagined. Today, my daughter has been fed, she's napped, and she's currently occupied with a bin full of toys. As a result, I've managed to write about half a page of Interwoven. It's not much, but it's progress!

Wish me more days like today!

Raising a Reader

I have been woefully neglectful of updating this blog, and, in fact, of doing any writing at all, really. I failed to finish the first draft of 3rd Down Cow or any of the other books I'm working on before my daughter, Charlotte, was born. Since then, I have been working on a very important task: raising a reader.

I read to my daughter daily. My husband reads to her. There are always stacks of books by the chair we spend much of our days in so that one may be easily grabbed and read. 

The best part is, that my daughter seems to enjoy this. She'll be 10 weeks old tomorrow, and already she is focusing on the pages of books I read her, taking in the colorful pictures as words she has yet to learn or understand embrace her. 

We read board books and paper books. We read books with a message and just plain silly books. We read counting books and learning books and books far advanced of where she is (which is really most of them still). If I can instill a love of books into my daughter, then I will feel I have done something right as a parent. 

I read in funny voices and put on accents to entertain her and hold her attention. (Much to my joy, she often gazes up at me in apparent wonder, when I do this.) I add my own commentary to books that we are reading, or point things out in pictures to try to encourage her interaction. When it's not easy for me to hold a book and her (like when she's nursing), I tell her stories - some I remember from childhood, some are autobiographical, and some I make up on the spot. I am surrounding her with words so that she may learn to use them, understand them, and hopefully love them as I do. 

I bond with her over books, musty smelling and yellowed with age, that I loved as a child (or my sister and sometimes my father before me). I find myself grinning when I see the names of past owners (all near and dear to my heart) written inside the front cover. Or better, I find inscriptions of books that were given as gifts before they were passed on. A happy birthday message is discovered inside a Shel Silverstein book of poetry, written to my sister from our grandparents and dated two years before I was even born. A message of love is found, neatly scripted inside the cover of Make Way For Ducklings, made out from my mother to my father before they were married. I share with my daughter, not only my love of books, but my history with the books, and the books' histories in turn. 

So now I have to put my writing on hold again, and go read to my daughter. Have a happy reading day!