Sparks' Notes: Weekly(ish) Writing Reflections by Author Lindsey Sparks

Episode 35: Book Release, Author Stress, and a Mental Health Break, Oh My!

April 04, 2022 Lindsey Sparks Season 1 Episode 35
Sparks' Notes: Weekly(ish) Writing Reflections by Author Lindsey Sparks
Episode 35: Book Release, Author Stress, and a Mental Health Break, Oh My!
Show Notes Transcript

Hi there! I'm Lindsey Sparks, author of books featuring hidden worlds and twisted myths. Welcome to my weekly author's notes podcast! This episode was recorded live in my Discord on Sunday, 4/3/2022, and I would love to share some of my reflections from this past week with you.

CURRENT FREEBIES:
Echo in Time (free ebook through all retailers)
Starter Library for newsletter subscribers (ebooks and audiobooks of my series starters, and more!)
https://www.authorlindseysparks.com/join-newsletter

CURRENT WIP:
Revising: Blood of the Broken (Atlantis Legacy, book 5)

READING:
Echo in Time by me (for Read By The Author)
Neon Gods by Katee Robert

WATCHING:
Moon Knight
Raised By Wolves (season 2)
Sanditon (season 2)
The Gilded Age
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Spiderman: No Way Home

HIGH:
Song of Scarabs and Fallen Stars BOOK RELEASE!!!

LOW:
The stress of the book release wore me out, and I needed a break.

LAST WEEK'S OBSESSION:
The book release!!!

BIG GOAL(s):
Revise 5 chapters of Blood of the Broken.

LOOKING FORWARD TO:
Slowing down for a while. :)
-
JOIN MY READER GROUP: Lindsey's Lovely Readers
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lovelyreaders

JOIN MY DISCORD SERVER:
https://discord.gg/EH4XPY6djP

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER:
https://www.authorlindseysparks.com/join-newsletter

WEBSITE: https://www.authorlindseysparks.com/
TIKTOK: @authorlindseysparks
INSTAGRAM: @authorlindseysparks
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/authorlindseysparks

Support the show

Hi there! I'm Lindsey Sparks, author of books that include hidden worlds and twisted myths. Welcome to my weekly authors notes podcast. Today is Sunday, April 3rd. And I would love to share some of my reflections from this past week with you. Okay. First of all, current freebies are still Echo in Time through all of the ebook retailers. And also my newsletter subscribers have access to my starter library, which includes Echo in Time, Ink Witch, Legacy of the Lost, and After The Ending in ebook and. All of those, except for After The Ending also in audio book for free to all of my newsletter subscribers. And I also just added the expanded playlist for Song of Scarabs and Fallen Stars. So it has all of the songs listed with the chapters that they go with and the excerpts and all that fun stuff. And yeah, and it's in my, like author's notes and it's 30 pages long. But it's really. Yeah, so subscribers have access to that and also a couple of novella. So yeah. My current work in progress is only one thing. Well, which is Blood of the Broken, the fifth Atlantis Legacy book. I, after a brief mental health break after the book release, which was on Tuesday, I did some followup stuff to just tidy up some things on Wednesday. Most feeling really worn out. So Thursday through today I have not been working and it has been amazing. And I've just been like watching lots of TV and movies and snuggling with my three-year-old a whole lot. Which is great. Cause he likes to snuggle with mom. So, Yeah, it's been really, really nice really needed. But tomorrow I, tomorrow morning it's exam, I am right back to my writing and I am on chapter eight of blood of the broken. I, I have been Like binge listening to the Blood of the Broken playlist on Spotify, just to get my brain back into that head space. I'm definitely seeing the scenes and feeling the feels. So I'm really excited about getting back into that story. Yeah. What am I reading? I finished a few days ago. I finished Neon Gods by Katee Robert. I thought it was great. Definitely going to read Electric Idol, which is book two. Very unique, spin on a myth retellings. And I'm curious to see, I'm really curious to see if she teaches us more about like this world and how it is separate from our real world. Olympus is separate from like the real world. Cause they're definitely in, they mentioned like modern time things like Berkeley. And so I'm just curious to see how it all fits together. If, if she dives into that or not, or if it's just going to stay more on the Roman. Side of things. I don't know. I'm curious. I probably won't get to that anytime super soon, because I'm just focusing on this book right now, but you never know. I might read something on a weekend when I'm not working. So that's the other thing that I'm trying to like be more conscientious of my not overworking myself. My husband has. Same things a lot lately. Just like, are you ever going to like take weekends off? I thought that was like part of the appeal to like being able to work for yourself. And it totally is. And I just got into the habit of working every single day. And so I'm trying to get out of that habit and I'm hoping that this extended weekend four day weekend will help me as I, as I am working on a weekend and I will be working every second. For the foreseeable future to record my podcasts, but I'm still being able to not have an alarm go off at 6:00 AM or feel like I need to get up and write immediately. And just like being able to hang out with my kid and snuggle with him on the couch while the baby's sleeping in the afternoon is feels like a real luxury. So. I'm really enjoying that and I'm really looking forward to it. So that is my plan for weekends going forward. And so I will just be normal, just be working Monday through Fridays, unless there's like, I'm like not going to meet my deadline or something like that. Then I won't be working on weekends again, or I feel like instead of working on weekends, maybe I would just be waking up. An hour earlier. I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, this has been really nice. I am also reading back to reading Echo in Time for the Read By The Author podcast and YouTube show. I just recorded chapters 19 and 20. With my audience in discord. And that will be going out on Wednesday after I've edited because I was bumbling all over the place. Yeah, fun. And yeah, it feels good. I'm excited to have that be a weekly thing where I read a little. Another chapter to every week. And it'll be nice to have like a scheduled time to do that. So I'm really looking forward to continuing that. I watched everything, I watched so much stuff over my four day break. I, oh so my husband and I started moon night, I think there's only one episode out right now. So we that's all we watch. What we started at two nights ago. So that's all that was out then. We started season two of race by wolves. I think we watched two episodes. No, we just watched one episode last night. That show is a little bit weird. But super interesting and very entertaining. Scifi, very scifi. I really like it. It's like on the verge of too weird for him, but he still wants to know what happens. So we're going to keep going. I started season two, have seen a tin and I watched, I think all of the episodes that are out, which I think was the first three episodes of season two of standard. Maybe it was only the first two episodes. I can't remember. Anyway, I watched what was out yesterday. I started the gilded age today, so clearly I'm in like a period drama phase. And I think I watched two or three episodes of that to really enjoy that. I'm really curious to see if they find some way to tie it together with Downton Abbey. Maybe with like chorus family or something, because it is. I think 1888. So like, what is that like 30 years before Downton Abbey starts. So that would be interesting if that was tied to. I watched the new Ghostbusters movie, Ghostbusters afterlife. I totally cried. Because I'm a big baby and it was really good and I liked it and I totally loved it. I grew up with Ghostbusters, so I loved it. And I also watched the new Spider-Man movie, no way home. And I also cried like a baby in that one and totally loved it. So I'm really hoping that they don't actually end the, that they do. Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, because I've thought it was really sad the way that it ended. No spoilers. Sorry. So, yeah, I hope that they continue that his, this version of Spider-Man story. So we'll see. All right. So my high this week was definitely the Song of Scarabs and Fallen Stars, book release. It was amazing to get that book out. The response has been awesome from readers. I, I love this book so much. So far all I have one, one wonderful reader is doing a D a countdown until book two, barely there's 360 days left. Because book two comes out on March 28th and Yeah, I'm really excited about how that all went. It was very smooth. Everything went at is exactly as expected. There were no. Bumps or anything? It was great. It was really good. It was not like didn't shoot to the top of the bestseller list. One day. I'll get one of those. One day we'll get there. I think authors always hold out that hope, especially authors, who aren't like, like automatic top of the best seller list authors. So there's always the hope that it's like, this is going to be the one, this is going to be the one that's going to turn me into JK Rowling minus stuff. But in terms of like success this is going to be the one that's going to get me the movie deal, you know? Maybe it's still good. But I genuinely love the story so much and it is doing exactly as I expected it to. So that is wonderful. My low, this last week was the, the stress of the book release really wore me out and I did need that mental health break. But I was able to recognize it and I took it. Delightful. And I'm really happy that I did. Last week's obsession was that the book released, I mean, can you sense a theme here? Like book release, book release, book release? It was like took over my life. I was, I don't think I was a very fun person to live with. I was definitely very stressed out and very just kind of like frazzled in the rest of my life because I was so. Like focused on everything that had to do with the book release. But it's done and I was able to like work in the garden today and it's just now that the book releases over the rest of my life can like other things can flood back into my life, which is so nice. So my have been neglecting getting my vegetable garden going. I mean, I can't, there's like tomatoes and stuff. I can't really plant in there yet. But I can at least get the seed started and I haven't done that yet. And I'm a little bit behind where I would want to be. I need to order some new seeds. My, my husband has a habit of he calls it, putting things away. Putting things away. And I like to have things out if there's things that I know I'm going to want later, I like to have them out where I can see them. When I was growing up, my mom always called my room, organized chaos. Maybe I call it organized chaos. And she called it a tornado. It looks like a tornado came through here, but it was organized chaos to me. So I could see where everything is. And I like that. And I had saved some of my green beans seed or green bean beans for seeds to use this year. I had the men as a block baggy and I, my husband is pretty sure that he threw them away in one of his putting things away phases. And I'm sitting here like, like, what do you didn't think that those beans were in a baggie for a reason maybe, you know, like, why else would I put dried. Green bean beans into a baggie. So those Avanish now I need to get new breed green bean seeds. I still need to find some squash that is powdery mildew resistant because I have like a terrible powdery. Problem every time I try to grow squash and pumpkins and it is just ridiculous. And the plants don't fruit very well. It gets really frustrating. So, I, instead of trying to battle it with copper and stuff like that I am going to attempt to just find seeds that are resistant. B they heirloom or not, which I really don't like to do. So I will still try to find heirloom seeds, but I'm really looking for powdery mildew resistant. Pumpkin's specifically pumpkins for my children for Halloween. So we're gonna try. All right. No wacky, Google, Google searches. I always stumble over Google, no wacky, Google searches this time. Because I didn't do any writing last week. So that's, so what is that like two weeks without any writing or revising? No work on blood of the broken, but starting tomorrow. And I'm going to be back on it, on it, on it, on it. My big goal for this week is to revise five chapters of blood of the bridge. So that is one chapter per Workday. And since I'm only working Monday through Friday that's what chapter day, because I will not be working on Saturday or Sunday, except for Sunday night to record podcasts. Yeah. Oh, I didn't write down something for looking forward to, what am I looking forward to? I am looking forward to just like relaxing back into this story and not having the hectic, like deadline of a book release, which is like a countdown, blaring an alarm over my head. And it's gone. It's done it's off. The alarm has done. So I'm just excited to get back to my like morning writing sessions and my afternoon podcast editing slash marketing admin kind of stuff. Or. I don't have anything that I have to do. I can like hang out with my kid. Yeah. Fun stuff like that. So, I think it's going to be a great week and I'm really looking forward to tackling it so that I believe is it for me this week. And thank you so much for listening. And I will be back next Sunday to ramble some more. Well, I guess Monday for you Sunday, for me. I'll be back next week to ramble some more. So until then, happy reading. And don't forget to pick up a copy of song of scabs and falling stars. Oh. And well, no, that's it. But if you want to wait for the hardcover, you can totally do that too, because it's going to be so, so pretty. And I'm so excited to be able to share that with everybody. So, yeah. Until next week, have you reading.