The Anxious Author

     I’m excited to bring you our first-ever author spotlight. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and I thought it would be a neat monthly item to add to the blog. The lovely Lavendar Woods agreed to be our first author. She and I have been corresponding over this interview for the past week, but we’ve known each other for over a year. She’s one of the authors I consider part of my tribe. I cannot wait for you all to get to know her.      Lavender Woods is a Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Romance author. She has one Contemporary Romance under her belt, as well. She lives in the central plains of Manitoba, Canada, with her terrier mix, Lily.       “I am a dog mom of a beautiful little terrier mix named Lily,” stated Woods. “Originally I had named her Solstice but my dad had a hard time pronouncing her name, so I changed it to Lily.”      Writing is something that comes naturally to Woods. She discov...

           We are now a little over halfway through the first month of 2022. This year is already going by too fast. I'm planning author events and trying to crank out my first novel of the year. My writing goal this year is to publish at least three works. My reading goal is much higher.      Last year I read over 140 books for Goodread's yearly challenge. I was doing monthly book picks for a while but they didn't seem to be gathering interest. I'm not sure if it is how I formatted them, the graphics, or something else. No matter, I've decided to start fresh with something similar but different this year.     Each of my reviews this year will contain the following information: book title, author name, rating, age level, genre, format read, and a review.     I've pledged to read 200 books in 2022, which is the highest reading goal I've ever set. It has been a while since I've made a goal I wasn't sure I could meet and it f...

      It's been ages since I properly outlined a book. I'm more of a pantser than a plotter. I like to discover the story as I write it, sometimes, though, that's not how a story wants to be written.     Despite having three series I'm working on new installments for, I've taken on another project. This one is far different than anything I've written. It's a historical urban fantasy story told through both the eyes of a modern character and the journal of several dead characters. I'm toying with titles, but the story is loosely based on my ongoing Alphabet Ancestry series here, on the blog.      The story will follow eleven generations of a family from Atticus homesteading in Nebraska, in 1862, to June inheriting the homestead in 2040. Real history will be mentioned, but there were be underlying paranormal and fantasy elements, as the homestead isn't normal.      I've created a timeline of character generations and a timeline of his...