These days are flying by! I missed both my blog and my newsletter this weekend. Ugh. I hate being late. I am an early person. If I’m on time, I feel late. It’s a thing.

Anyway, I found this great site called Inkarnate where you can make your own fantasy maps for free. They can be as detailed as you wish, or a vague outline if that’s what you have in mind.

I spent an afternoon creating a map of Sepherra, the land of my WIP. I only had access to the free features, so you have to use your imagination a little. But look at all the things you can do for FREE! Here’s my map:

Yes, I should have been writing, but I needed to see some things on paper before I could explain where they’re going. It’s all clear to me now, though. However, I might need to do one of the inside of the castle because I can’t see it.

I will be writing less for the next few weeks because of my consulting business. Generally, I help people get their query submissions ready to send to agents. I’m hoping to work with a new client, so I can try some of the new things I’m learning with her and see how well her book does in marketing.

I have been told that it is a wise investment to join the following sites for marketing ads: Buckbooks, BKnights and Booksends. So I plan to do that this week with my first book. I’m already on Bookbub, but mass exposure brings sales, and these ads will get you noticed.

I am going to need beta readers for the next novel I am launching. If you’d like to be a beta reader for me, it’s simple. Comment, or send me an email at Haskin.author@gmail.com with your name and email of choice (if different from the one you sent from), and let me know you’d like to be my beta. Then, I will send you a free copy of my manuscript and you tell me what you think. If you would like to work on grammar/spelling editing, that’s fine. Or, if you want to leave a million comments and tell me what you like and don’t like as you go, that’s fine, too. I love those. But your method of critique is up to you. The more betas I have, the more types of input I receive, so feel free to message me. I will probably be sending the book out in August or September, so you have time, but I’d like to get an idea of who is willing to be a reader. Thank you in advance!

So…how’s the writing going? Are you writing along with me? I am at 36,370 words. That’s not a big change from last post, but I’m plugging along. I’m trying to get the story out so I can go back and make it awesome! Right now, though, I only have a vague idea of where the story is going scene by scene and things change sometimes.

I think a lot of writers give up and call it a “block,” but if you write through it, the inspiration will come. This is an abridged version of what I wanted to say because I accidentally deleted my post. So please bear with me. If you have an outline of how your story line is supposed to go, when you hit that dry place, you don’t have to let it derail you. Write some uninteresting text if you have to, and when inspiration hits, and you pour yourself a new cup, and put on your comfy pants, you can write the stuffing out of the rest of the book. You can pump that bit so full of excitement when you edit, that no one will ever know how you had to claw your way through that paragraph, or scene, or maybe a whole chapter. The thing is, not a soul has to see it until you are ready. You can fix it.

I can’t remember the rest of the post. I had it all finished and my computer said it was autosaving over and over. So I had to leave the page to stop it, but I didn’t think to make another copy of what I’d written and the version it saved was only half there. So I apologize for the short, late post and I’ll see you next weekend.

Keep writing!

~jenn