I have not posted updates in a while, having been inundated with holidays, sick children (all three children were in school for a grand total of eight days in March), and travel. But I am still working away! The sequel to Pledging Season is still under construction. I took a break from it during much of the chaos to work on an unrelated graphic novel script that is yummy and fun and involves fancy dresses, an homage to Song of the Lioness, nonviolent revolution, and shredding heteronormativity into little-bitty sticky bits. As one does. It has been a blast, and it was exactly what my brain could handle for much of the spring. Production timelines for illustrating graphic novels are very, very long, so don’t expect to see that any time soon, but I am still cranking away over here! I’m hoping to have Pledging Season’s sequel out in 2025, but that is more of a wish than a prediction.
Category: News
Interview with Spun Yarn
Spun Yarn is the service I used to get beta readers. They have an interview of me up on their blog!
https://thespunyarn.com/blog/2022/4/20/author-profile-erika-erickson-malinoski
Launch day!!!
Yaaaaaayyyy! The print copy of Pledging Season is live today, and the ebook will go live tomorrow. Go buy your copy now!
Pre-Orders are live!
It’s been a long five years, but my first novel Pledging Season is now available for pre-order! It will be available on April 26, 2022. Print copies will eventually be up on Amazon (Amazon doesn’t permit print pre-orders) and are currently available on Barnes and Noble (which does). The ebook can additionally be found on Kobo and will be available through libraries on OverDrive after release. If you like iBooks, it can be found through the app as well.
Pre-order at the links below!
COVER REVEAL
Second Draft of Through The Mirror is Done!
Wow, that didn’t take at all longer than I thought it would. Nope. I have not in any way, shape, or form encountered the phenomenon that literally everyone who is not a first-time author warns about. About that length of time it takes to make revisions… I would like to blame caring for a three-year-old during indefinite quarantine, but that honestly only added a month or two.
At any rate, completely ripping apart the first draft, adding a second point of view, substantially revising the themes, and actually… you know… doing some series planing is now done. Next up is shipping it off to editors. At which point I, with my new found humility, estimate that revisions will take a very long time. I’m still hoping to have pre-order links up this year. Now that I have also looked into the lead time needed to market a book, I have a tough time seeing this coming out before 2021. However, I promise it will make it into print eventually!
The Accidental Cover
Huh. I appear to have accidentally made myself a book cover.
Honest, I was trying to get over my extreme tendency to do everything myself. I really and truly intended to hire a professional for this. I still do. But I was playing around with some concept art for the cover and it kept being almost right, so I kept tweaking it, and before you know it… three days of no writing and bam, a book cover. The control freak in me says, “YES! ALL THE EDITING POWER IS MINE!!!!” The part of me that is attempting to learn that getting help from other people frequently makes for a better product is retrenching at editors. Negotiations continue.
Credit to Gianella Castro, Anne Nygard, and Vinicius Amano on Unsplash for the images used.
Fun with Author Photos!
Getting official author photos done is also known as… time to haul out my favorite dress I ever sewed! This is one of the things I miss about teaching. Chaperoning prom is one of the only opportunities for adults to wear super fancy dresses. I had a blast getting these done.
Draft 2 Outline Done!
Finally! The expanded outline to turn the first draft of Through The Mirror into a full series is done! It even meets in the middle, which is always a plus. Below is a picture of the initial stage of the outline.
First draft of through the mirror done!
For both the first and probably the last time in my life, I finished a task ahead of when I expected to! And not just a little bit early, but almost a month and a half early! With any luck my original estimate of early 2020 for the release will continue to be on target. At least until the inevitable unforeseen delays catch up.