Friday Morning Coffee Chat

Happy Friday morning, have a cuppa…

Happy Fri-yay! We made it!

I’m happy to report that my dad came home from the hospital about a month ago. Overall, he’s doing very well. A week later, I came home. And the day I left Dad’s, my husband texted that my third son had tested positive for COVID that morning.

Ugh. But there was no way I wasn’t coming home.

First, Jabin got it. Then my husband, Jason. Then the rest of us got it about a week after I got home.

I finally tested negative this past Monday morning.

It could have been a lot worse. We all had the “very bad cold” version, so it could have been much worse. But it’s definitely affected my energy levels and productivity.

Speaking of, I've been working hard to catch up on the cumulative effects of two months away, then two weeks-plus of COVID. I'm not all the way there, but I made progress this week.

First of all, Every Star that Shines is now slated for release on my birthday, August 10. And it’s already available for pre-order in eBook and print.

I’m so excited for this book to release! I’ve already had some pre-orders come in, which is awesome. I’d love to have to order another batch of books, so keep the pre-orders coming!

I spent some time this week looking at my print book prices. Prices for everything have gone up, and that means my prices had to, too. Unfortunately. However, the good news is that I’m not paying for people to buy my books anymore, so there’s that…

While I was at it, I caught up on my accounting. This is definitely one of my least favourite parts of being in business, but I love having all the numbers marching in neat little rows so I can see what’s happening with it once I am caught up. Now that that’s done, I feel more balanced and less overwhelmed.

I’ve also been doing some client work on a couple of freelance projects. These are what I’m still the most behind on, unfortunately, but not really. I’ll still hit my deadlines. It’s just making for some long days to do that.

I’ve started plotting my next book in the Peace Country Romance series, but, thanks to all that other stuff I just mentioned, that’s mostly been happening in my head so far. I’m looking forward to being caught up on other stuff so I can start writing again. My creative brain is getting itchy.

I almost forgot to mention this cool thing I did last week: I made Content Level cards for each of my books so people will know what kinds of content to expect in them. This is especially meant to help parents wondering if my Grigori books would be appropriate for their kids, but since I write such a variety of genres, it’s to help other people get what they want, too. Here’s the card for Every Star that Shines:

Content Levels in Every Star that Shines (Peace Country Romance book 1) by Talena Winters: Sensuality: 1/5 (non-graphic kissing); Violence: 0/5; Language: 0/5; Intense themes: 1/5 (divorce, mentions domestic violence). Equivalent movie rating: PG.

You can check out my other book pages to see how they are rated.

We've had thundershowers and heavy rain here all week, which is unusual for this area. It's been awesome to see the lightning... though there were a couple yesterday that startled the pants off me. And knocked out our power for a few hours, so our family went out for supper.

And can I say, ouch? I'm not a futurist, but I wish I could see what the future holds as far as the economics of our country, because the present looks a little dire.

I swear I was only in the post office for ten minutes the other day, and when I came out, there was a river under my car…

Anyway, I'll be playing more catch-up this weekend, but I'm looking forward to a little time off, too. On my deck. In the sunshine. Enjoying my puppies and my plants and my knitting and a book. And not going places that will use gas. :-)

What are your weekend plans?