Getting my shi-hoolie together...

Look at me, getting my ducks in a row. 

In the last month, I bought a MacBook Air and Vellum, Apple's amazing formatting software to make all the pretty, pretty books I want; I opened my business bank account, and also took out a post office box so I have a fun address to have things sent to all official-like. I have some more paperwork to do, but I'll get to it. 

I imported my first Elliot Lake novel into Vellum just to play with it and it's freaking amazing! So now I will go through all six of my novels and clean them up, fix the front and back matter to reflect my new business name, pop on new covers for the Elliot Lake series at least (I may dive into new covers for the other three too), and then figure out my republishing plan.

I'm official-official with the state of North Carolina and the federal side of things — I have an EIN and everything, and I'm also setting up my books: financial, series bibles, and then future works. Everything is spread out through my various laptops and cloud storage, so I want to clean all of that up and get everything in one place... because I have more books to write. 

I read accounts from other authors out there and it seems like the authorpreneur landscape is as still goofy as ever. You can work your ass off and never make a dime, or you can come in with three books that take off and then Netflix is calling. There doesn't seem to be an in between. But, I know plenty of authors who do this for a living and are tripping down their own paths and still sending kids to college, and so that's my goal — to find my own path to trip down. 

I'm still getting this house together, though, which is sort of slowing things down. I'm still faced with painting a few rooms, hanging ALL the art, lamps, plants, and unpacking. I really want to renovate the kitchen, but no idea when that might happen. So, one day at a time. 

Today, it's the dentist and some editing, and I want to unpack more of our art. And repotting plants that are already thriving in this house. (Hopefully, the next time we move, I will not have to give them all away, because the plan is to move, just not 3,000 miles.)

My fourth Elliot Lake book is halfway written. I want to go through the first three with an eagle eye, make any corrections before republishing, and then zoom through the fourth. That series will have new names and new covers, and I'm changing the publisher from Treetangle Publishing to Forsythia Cottage Writing & Design LLC, which is killing me, because I loved my Treetangle Publishing name and branding materials. But, life sometimes kicks you in the ass and you have to just pick up the pieces and move forward. 

And my new license plate came. It is AWESOME. 

The weather here is still atrocious, but the girls and I have been busying ourselves at the Halifax Art Studio once or twice a week, painting pottery for gifts (which is why I can't post photos), and that has helped a lot.

We also attended a fun little weekend in Halifax where they were celebrating late 1700s, focusing on the occupations of the day... we visited a little print shop, met a woodworker who was demonstrating all the hand tools of the day, an old lawyer's office, a graveyard with headstones dating back centuries (crazy to think about!), and we met some wonderful horses. Then, we were melting (and we weren't the ones wearing the multi-layered wool costumes!) so we headed to the art studio to paint for a few hours before heading home. Lunch that day was amazing pizza from Two Doors Down, one of the two restaurants in Halifax. Dee-lish. We'll definitely get that again.