Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Tomb of Pthames (YA Historical Mystery)

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme that focuses on the yet-to-be released books we're waiting for and is hosted by Wishful Endings. It's inspired by Waiting on Wednesday by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Today I'm highlighting a suspenseful and historical mystery!

Title: The Tomb of Pthames

Author: C.W. James

Genre: YA Historical Mystery

Publication Date: June 13, 2024

Preorder on Amazon

Amazon summary:

A blend of historical intrigue and imaginative fiction.

Embark on a riveting journey stretching from an ancient Egyptian tomb in the sun-scorched Libyan Desert to the streets and back alleys of 1910 London. This gripping and fast-paced adventure introduces Carter Pinsent, the son of an English archaeologist, whose world takes an unexpected turn after becoming involved in the discovery of the enigmatic tomb of Ptahmes, an ancient Egyptian priest.

The tale unfolds with the promise of untold treasures and long-lost secrets, but this archaeological find proves to be anything but ordinary. Beyond historical artifacts, the tomb holds properties that defy explanation, blurring the lines between the known and the unknown, magic and science, life and death.

With the entrance of Sir Robert Ottley, a celebrated yet controversial Egyptologist, Carter becomes ensnared in rivalries and deceit. The narrative takes a supernatural turn with the arrival of Dr. Belleville, a discredited doctor and spiritualist, introducing a world where forces from beyond and resurrection are terrifyingly real. Sir Robert's intriguing daughter, May, adds a layer of complexity to the tale, challenging Carter's beliefs and contributing to a cast of vibrant characters. The excavation transforms into a race against death as each party strives to unlock the tomb's mysteries first.

More than a mere treasure hunt, The Tomb Of Ptahmes delves into the realms of darkness and light, exploring the delicate balance between myth and history. It seamlessly intertwines themes of legacy and the enduring human quest for understanding. Perfect for enthusiasts of historical adventure, teens who crave a different type of story, and reluctant readers, this narrative is a journey of discovery not only into ancient tombs but also into the profound depths of the human spirit. It resonates with those who gaze at the stars, yearning for the secrets of the past—a tale that unearths the eternal quest for connection and knowledge.

Why I'm Waiting:

I was lucky enough to be a beta reader for this story, and it hooked me from start to finish! C.W. James crafts the perfect blend of history, romance, and suspense and I read this story in a matter of days. There's also a mystery afoot among the suspense, which for the life of me I couldn't figure out all the pieces before the end. I highly recommend this story for anyone who loves historical and supernatural suspense amid Egyptian culture and history. 

What books are you waiting on?

#WritersLife: Writing a New Poetry Collection While Editing the Other New Collection

 

Welcome to #WritersLife, where I talk writing in real life. 

I'm deep in the editing trenches for Poetry #3 while I await the return of the professionally edited manuscript from my critique partner. I'm trying to focus on the other areas while I wait, like I mentioned in the previous post, including the metadata, the promos, and ARC set-up, but lately my creative muse has blossomed and is diving head first into Poetry #4.

I debated entering pieces into anthologies, and I probably will still do that to help gain more exposure, but this new collection has me in a choke hold. I think it's a combination of reading Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan and listening to The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology by Taylor Swift that has shoved me into the writing and daydreaming that is making up this new collection. 

I'm focusing much more on poetic styles for this collection, which I'm trying to not let heavily affect the voice for Poetry #3. I love the rawness of #3 and want to maintain that, but for #4, I'm moving into more of my favorite poetic devices, namely alliteration, slant rhymes/true rhymes, and a repetitive structure that's reminiscent of songwriting. 

I grew up on country music, and its storytelling is one I want to emulate in my poetry, whether that's with the attention to detail or repetitive lines. The five senses play an even stronger role in both of these collections whereas my first two collections, The Ones and Missed Arrows, honed in on emotions, relationships, and overall more intangible imagery. I want the readers to taste the scenes in these new manuscripts and feel the zing on their tongues and abhor the pungency in their nostrils. 

I have a working title I love, but it's still early (we're nearly a year from when I would release #4). Poetry #3 changed titles after having a title picked out for 8 months, and I still can't believe it changed because that title was so near and dear to my heart. However, the official title alludes to more of the overarching themes and will be a stronger title for marketing purposes (writing is a craft, but publishing is a business after all). I get goosebumps rereading some of these pieces and they haven't even been edited by me yet, let alone seen by my CP or beta readers. 

I wonder if this is how Taylor feels working on music: she knows her latest writing is her best because she's perfecting her craft, but her listeners are on two albums back and she can't share it with them. I feel that way with my poetry. I want to show off these new poems, but I still have a whole collection that hasn't been released. It's also a strong testament to never work on one project at once. As soon as you send a manuscript off to a CP, editor, or beta reader, start outlining or drafting your next project. 

I can't wait to share #3 with everyone, and we have less than three months until its release! Official title, cover reveal, and blurb is coming in July, so stay tuned here, on Instagram, and on YouTube.

Happy writing!

#WritersLife: New Poetry Updates May 2024

 

#WritersLife, where I talk writing in real life. 

I'm so excited with the progress I've made on my latest poetry collection! It came back from the editor at the end of April, I spent time on the copy edit suggestions, tweaked minor lines and sections, and sent it off to my critique partner. 

Today I finalized the meta data, including the blurb, categories, and tags for KDP, D2D, and IngramSpark. I also want to upload to Kobo directly this time so my ebook can be included in the Kobo Plus program (I have a video going up soon on my three months experience as an author on Kindle Unlimited). The cover was finalized a little while ago, and it's killing me to not share it yet!

I finalized the ARC sign-up form which I hope will be going live in July, and I'm thinking of having blog subscribers or YouTube subscribers as my first-come, first-serve group if anyone is interested. Money is a little tighter than last release, so I want to minimize just how much money I give to Meta while I search for ARC readers (I used a boosted ad last time, which found me 24 readers and of whom 8 left reviews). 

This is a hard collection. It focuses on my familial relationships, how they shaped me, and how they continue to affect me even after their deaths. For those who read my debut collection, The Ones, you may have picked up on some allusions to the theme of this new collection, but it's something I haven't dived into in years because I had accepted it as a part of my life. 

For anyone facing hardship in the terms of illness, abuse, neglect, or anything outside of their immediate control, this is the collection for you. It will probably make you cry in more emotions than one because I did from start to finish crafting these pieces. 

I still need to draft the scripts for my YouTube videos for this Friday and next, but I'm debating skipping next Friday because I need a bit of a breather. I took a week off for the first week in May, much needed after nonstop client work for editing and beta reading, but now I need time off to finalize the publishing aspects of the new poetry. 

Oh, and book marketing. Can't forget that. 

Happy writing, reading, and life-ing!

#WritersLife: My Publishing Journey from 2021 to 2024

 

Welcome to #WritersLife, where I talk writing in real life.

Well friends, it's been a while.

I started this blog just before I graduated college in 2014, was active for three years, gone for four, briefly touched base, and disappeared again. This time, I'm not as lost as I was in 2021 with my writing and publishing journey.

I don't know what capacity I'd like to use this space just yet, but if nothing else, it will be the written version of my Author Tube series over on YouTube (the OGs will remember that "obsessed with YouTubers" was one of my "About Me" inclusions because really, is there anything more remarkable about me than that?). But firstly, let me dive into a bit of what I've been up to.

2021

This year ended nearly the way it began: still lost and without a shred of writing to add to my experience. I remained lost as to which direction to take or how to jump back into this world. Let's face it, trends are real, and trying to understand the latest trends in YA lit after distancing myself from it for years was far more daunting.

2022

I decided to embrace my new sales position and self-published my first ebook (since unpublished and now no longer available) centered on sleep. I made three sales and was ecstatic, unsure of how this would play out long term but pumped to be working with words again.

That same month I got my first editing client on Fiverr. I started out offering beta reading, copywriting, and job description services (spoiler alert, only one of those gigs is still live). By the end of the year, I made my first $1.05 from self-publishing and my first $52 from freelancing. 

I also dabbled in poetry a bit as well as pieces of stories, the first few poems creating what soon became an 8,000-word poetry manuscript. 

2023

I published my second sleep ebook at the start of the year, doing a week-long pre-order and dabbling with marketing on a new Instagram account created in the same month. I marketed myself as Orange Rose Editorial.

I decided by spring I wanted to publish the poems that had now amassed into a collection that spanned 100 pages. It was also in spring that Fiverr promoted me to the next level of seller, and I curated my services to only involve books: beta reading, copyediting, manuscript critiques, and query letter assistance (all for young adult and middle grade, naturally). 

I made a book cover, had colleagues from college read my story, and self-published my poetry, titled The

Ones, on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), IngramSpark, and Draft2Digital (D2D). I announced it three months before it's release and somehow sold 81 copies by release day. I still don't know how I did that. The sales I made by the end of 2023 covered the publication costs. 

I was promoted to the next tier of seller on Fiverr, and July saw my first 4-figure month from editing services. I also wrote the first draft of my next poetry collection while brainstorming an additional two. For NaNoWriMo, I wrote 23k words of a YA cozy mystery (that has yet to be completed, but I have no intentions of letting it go). 

I met Alexandra Bracken, Patrice Caldwell, Adalyn Grace, and Jessica Olson. 

Lastly, I started posting on YouTube regarding self-publishing, writing, and editing. 

2023 had shaped up to look suspiciously close to what 2017 could have been had I not lost sight of my dream in 2016. 

2024

In February, I self-published my second poetry collection, Missed Arrows, to a whopping 9 readers. I also experienced my first annoying experience with IngramSpark and testing out the waters with Kindle Unlimited. Spoiler alert: I made zero sales in three months and will be publishing the ebook wide. 

March saw my second 4-figure month with editing jobs, and it hasn't slowed since. I'm on track to earn the Top-Rated Seller badge's qualifications before the end of May. 

My third poetry collection is slated for release in August 2024. My YouTube channel just hit 250 subscribers. I've assisted 90+ clients on Fiverr. 

I've faced disappointment this year as well as tremendous glee, and I can't wait to see how the remainder of the year plays out. I'd love to get a website up and running (but this will be my main spot until I figure that confusion out). I want to get better at book marketing and making videos. I want to build my writing community.

I think that's how I'll divide this blog with my YouTube channel. The videos will highlight editing and publishing news while this will only cover my writing journey and thoughts I don't share anywhere else. Of course, I might end up combining the two at some point, but for now, this will revert to being my reading and writing nook.

Thanks for joining me. My last post ended with me wanting to write again, and now I'm publishing every year. Keep on writing, friends. 

#WritersLife: Managing the Job Search

#writerslife

 It's been four years since I held a word-related job (an academic instructional associate at a community college), and it's definitely showing to the hiring managers when I submit an application. 

I don't blame them. We suffered something worse than a recession: a pandemic. The warehouse job I've held since 2019 definitely saved me and offered me more hours than I was signed up for because of everyone else forced to remain indoors. I thought, back in 2017 when I quit my college position, that I was ready to leave the writing world behind and focus on an industry that would be able to sustain me.

However, 2021 has been the most stressful and difficult year of my life. I lost someone I loved, and I've never experienced grief like that before and it took a long time before I even wanted to talk to family and friends again. But, as with all negative experiences, it also shed light on the lifestyle I was pursuing. Wake up, run errands, stress at work, shower, sleep, and repeat. I realized I didn't want that for myself. 

I want to wake up excited for the day. I want to look forward to work. I want to be happy to be living the life I'd made for myself. Instead, I started therapy to help myself cope with stress and life management because of how miserable my current job makes me feel.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate warehousing in the beginning. In fact, I found so much enjoyment out of it with my last company. The guys I worked for and with genuinely cared about me and looked out for me. I experienced rough patches where I couldn't identify who I was, but it was the lack of writing that led to those emotions, not the job itself. This new warehouse job, however, led to breakdowns in the company restrooms and wishing I could quit on the spot and never look back.

Unfortunately, I needed the insurance, and I couldn't afford to walk away from that. Until now.

My husband has a great job with a company that offers benefits, and I finally realized I didn't have to stay in warehousing to get the insurance I need. Not only that, but I haven't needed doctors' visits like I did with my previous head injury, so any insurance coverage will provide what I need. 

Needless to say, I can't explain all that on a resume, so I've been rejected almost half a dozen times in three weeks. Twice yesterday. But with the pandemic, so many creatives lost their jobs or full time hours and I'm competing with an even larger field than last time. Not only that, but these are individuals who never gave up on their writing careers, or who practiced writing regularly, or took unpaid or low wage positions to keep those credentials on their resumes. 

I know everyone says writing is something you can start at anytime, and it's true, but it's not something you can get paid to do at any given time. I publish posts on my blogs and run social media branding for a food truck, but neither of those are paying my bills right now. It's hard, but for some reason, I don't want to throw in the towel. I want to see this through. I want to write again.  

#WritersLife: Four Years Later

 

#writerslife, where I remember my former life.

It's been almost four years since I posted on this blog. In that time, I underwent cranial and spinal surgery, bought a tiny house, changed industries, and got married. Needless to say, none of those things involved writing. In fact, I turned away from writing in every sense.

I touched on a bad break-up I went though in 2016 that halted my ambition and that led to a slower climb in my writing endeavors in previous posts. However, I can't fully explain what coerced me to stop writing and change industries after spending four years earning my Bachelor's in Creative Writing and an additional three years working in the publishing and marketing scenes.

It started with wanting a break. A mental break from the self-imposed deadlines, an emotional break from wanting to live up to the best-selling author image I curated, and a physical break from the hours staring at a bright computer screen (yellow tinted glasses are one of the greatest inventions of our modern times). I took that break and then some, and stopped writing for two years, save for the occasional journaling that never lasted more than a couple weeks.

I felt frustration the first dozen times friends, families, and colleagues asked if I'd been writing. Why was it simple to understand someone no longer wanting to work in sales but difficult to understand why I didn't want to write? And then I realized: no one knew how to identify me without writing.

I had no identity without writing.

I suddenly had to find new things to define myself not only for others, but myself. Without manuscripts and book clubs and author events, what was I into? Since everything I enjoyed, mainly video games, church events, and playing with my dogs, couldn't equate to a paycheck, I thought I had nothing going for myself. I dove into warehousing because 1) I was good at it and 2) in 2017, I needed good insurance for my upcoming surgery and warehousing pays well in that department.

I had my parents, my college friends, and now ex-boyfriends push me to write again after my surgery in 2018, now that I had my own place when I bought my house in 2019, and definitely again when we went into lockdown in 2020. But I didn't know what to write about. I wasn't reading young adult anymore, and I definitely wasn't adult enough for fiction. I love my faith, but I am far too much of a sinner to write religiously.

While I pondered these thoughts, my newlywed husband proposed that I write again. I snapped at him, told him he wasn't the first to suggest it, the first to not understand, the first to think it was easy to jump back into even if I secretly thought my voice was gone forever. He said a dozen people could have suggested me to try it, but it was only meant to be the thirteenth person who made a difference.

Something about that moved me and it pissed me off. 

I was done with writing. I didn't know how anymore, or what was popular, or who was still agenting, or where the book blogs were jumping. But it stuck with me. 

A few weeks later, my dad opened his grilled cheese food truck. He asked me to do the social media, and I said yes. It gave me such a rush, and I had fun googling cheese memes and food truck events and blowing up my friends' pages with constant sharing of its posts. I actually enjoyed the scheduling. I enjoyed the self-inflicted deadlines. Within two weeks I was back in my old habit of scheduling posts a week or more in advance. 

Feeling encouraged, I applied to a writing job. They rejected me. I applied for another. They rejected me, too. And with that, I was back in the industry

I still don't see myself cranking out a novel or two a year like I did in my prime, but I know blogging will allow me to practice without feeling like I'm doing something wrong, and the social media posts will provide me with enough structure to creatively stretch my legs.

So here I am, four years after my last post, and this is my #writerslife. 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Cruel Prince

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme that focuses on the yet-to-be released books we're waiting for and is hosted by Wishful Endings. It's inspired by Waiting on Wednesday by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Today I'm highlighting an anthology about folklore and fairy tales!

Title: The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air #1)

Author: Holly Black

Genre: YA Fantasy

Publication Date: January 2, 2018

Add to Goodreads

Goodreads' summary:

Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

Why I'm Waiting:

When I was in high school, I loved reading books about the faerie universe. The older I got, the less I read about mystical creatures, but faeries never seem to fade like vampires and werewolves, blowing up and then vanishing to blow up again. I'd like to get involved in the faerie universe again, and Holly Black's novels are full of them, and full of them well from what I've heard.

What books are you waiting on?

Other posts you may like: 

• Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic (YA Fantasy)
• #WritersLife: Changing Up Your Inner Office
• Can't-Wait Wednesday: Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy (YA Fantasy)