Hey y’all. This blog post is coming to you from my parents’ house where I am laid up in bed with a turrible sore throat. Hooray for travel.

Wanted to update everyone on the latest with everything, and provide some general thoughts on how the Empath release went.

Moving Update:

First and foremost, I’m back in Pensacola and this is my permanent home base. I say home base because I’m still traveling-both back to DC for clients, and around the US for conventions. I am in the process of buying a house down here (that’s a blog post for another day), and getting settled in. It was a rough couple of days when I first got here, but I seem to have let go of most of the anxiety.

I was up in DC/VA for a week and a half last week to attend the VA Comicon in Richmond, see my clients, and attend the Tidewater Comicon in VA Beach (in that order).

VA Comicon:

While I love Brett and Dan and the crew there, I’m not sure it’s worth it for me to drive from P’cola anymore. The shows are so hit-and-miss, and this weekend was definitely a miss. I believe it was my worst show ever, sales-wise, and I didn’t even make enough to cover expenses, which were minimal.

TW Comicon:

I think I expected this one to be a lot bigger, and so while I didn’t do terrible, I didn’t do as well as I thought. I didn’t make costs here either, but that was more my fault for not looking harder for a cheaper hotel, and deciding to drive down Friday instead of Saturday morning (long, long story there).

I was really happy to see a lot of repeat customers, though, and even more excited to see folks really take to Empath. I’m going to have to lower my expectations for Double Life and raise them for Empath from now on, since it seemed that the books were in competition with each other for cash.

S. Usher Does Amurica Status/WorldCon Status

I have decided to cancel my cross-country driving tour this year. I’m just burnt-out yo, and being on the road for six weeks straight is not my idea of a fabulous time right now.
I am still considering attending WorldCon via flying, since I have a table and a hotel, but I might not. I have until Monday to make my decision, so I’ll let you guys know when/if it happens. I need to do some more local-ish events so I can catch up.
Or you can all buy my books so I don’t have to go to conventions to sell them. Either/or. 😉

 

Conviction Status:

One of the very nice things about having no internet/tv at Grandpa’s house (where I stayed while visiting my clients in DC) was that it forced me to read some books and to lay down the big rocks for Conviction (that’s Razia Book 3 if you’re just joining us).
I’m happy to say that I passed 60,000 words and have filled in most of the blanks in the book. Now I’m just going through and either leaving notes to fix small wording things later, or fixing them. Hoping to have it to the betas by the end of the month.

Blog Status:

Lots of things are happening in my personal life at the end of May, and so I am taking the time to shut down the blog and social media activity from May 25-June 7th. During that time, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on the update to the website design, which will go live on Double Life’s (and my) birthday, June 12th.
Also, fair warning: If you’re a KU subscriber and you haven’t grabbed Alliances, you have less than a month to read it for free! And if you are not a KU subscriber, you can grab Alliances on B&N, iTunes, etc. starting June 8th.

Empath Release:

I just wanted to say thank you for everyone who has bought the book, read the book, cried over the book, and/or reviewed the book. I was so freaking nervous about it, wondering if I was the only one who felt like this, but to see that my own fears are universal was such a relief.
Thank you to everyone on Twitter and such for sharing the book and for spreading the love. You guys are the best.
I will say that this book didn’t get the kind of attention from me that Alliances did, and I think it was to its detriment from a presales perspective. That being said, I think that this one might be one of those books that people read and share. So we’ll see what happens.
~*~
I don’t have any more blogs planned until the drawdown next week, but I’ll be around when I’m not asleep. Or at the beach. Or cuddling with my dogs.
Life is good.