Happy Saturday!

Another week behind us and we’re into a new month and we celebrated a national holiday! Wow! I also finished the 4th draft of Food Blogger #4. Many chapters are still with my critique partner and then the beast is headed to a freelance editor for an edit. I’ll be dealing with that later so I’m focusing on finishing draft 4. I do have the beast printed out and I’m going to read through it. I think a few of my chapters are way too long, so some reorganization needs to happen this coming week. Let’s see if I can keep the red pen away from those pages. LOL.

This week I mailed out the Advance Reader Copies for THREE WIDOWS AND A CORPSE (available for preorder now). I was blown away by the requests I received for ARCs when I shared on social media I had the books. If you’re a reviewer and didn’t get a print copy, digital ARCs will be available on NetGalley in late August/early September. I have to admit, I’m a little nervous in sending these babies out into the world. I felt the same way with my other books so I guess that feeling never goes away.

This week we started a new month and I have goals for July. But first, let’s take a moment and let the quote for this month sink in – nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort.

Never truer words ever spoken.

Everything I’ve achieved to date with my writing has been because of hard work, effort and commitment. Showing up everyday isn’t easy but if you have a dream you need to commit to it, work at it and celebrate it when you’ve achieved it. Then going forward you’ll practice – Rinse. Repeat. Because you can’t rely on your laurels.

So what are goals for the July? I’m so glad you asked. 🙂

First let me say, I’ve been looking forward to July for the past few weeks because I’ll be diving into my secret project (soon to be announced as the contract has just been received) and I’ll be starting Resale Boutique Mystery #3! The outline for the book was accepted by my editor. In book 3 we find Kelly’s former boss, the dragonista of Seventh Avenue, standing over the dead body of her ex-Husband’s new wife (wearing a fabulous faux leopard fur coat of course). There are so many things about this story I love and I can’t wait to start writing the manuscript. Darn secret project. Just kidding. I love my secret project. There you have pretty much what I have planned for the month – a lot of writing. So I’ll be cocooned in my air condition office with Billy until further notice.

There are times when a gal needs a chocolate cupcake. I needed one Tuesday. Just so you know, not everyday is perfect here in Deb’s writing world all the time. There are sucky days and luckily when I had one this week I also had a fresh batch of chocolate cupcakes to help ease the pain. 🙂 And also luckily for me, I didn’t go into a cupcake coma, I managed to stop myself from eating every single cupcake.

For the rest of the week, I stepped away from social media and I am taking long weekend off from writing. It was a quiet, long-stretch of time that was needed. I worked outside a bit, ate a really good burger and took numerous walks with Billy, well he actually was in the stroller for most of the time outside.

I’d love to hear what your highlight of the week was or what you have planned for this weekend? Did you watch any fireworks?