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, 4/25/2022, 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)
After The Ending (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:
Crescent City: House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J Maas
Echo in Time by me (for Read By The Author)
WATCHING:
Snowfall
Sanditon (season 2)
HIGH:
Finished(ish) the gallery wall of nerdy art in my office
LOW:
Cover designer woes
LAST WEEK'S OBSESSION:
Blood of the Broken
GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY:
ancient tattoos / viking tattoos / ancient greek tattoos
types of kicks
BIG GOAL(s):
Finish this draft of Blood of the Broken! (~10 chapters)
LOOKING FORWARD TO:
Diving in to Act 3 of Blood of the Broken
-
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
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, 4/25/2022, 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)
After The Ending (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:
Crescent City: House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J Maas
Echo in Time by me (for Read By The Author)
WATCHING:
Snowfall
Sanditon (season 2)
HIGH:
Finished(ish) the gallery wall of nerdy art in my office
LOW:
Cover designer woes
LAST WEEK'S OBSESSION:
Blood of the Broken
GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY:
ancient tattoos / viking tattoos / ancient greek tattoos
types of kicks
BIG GOAL(s):
Finish this draft of Blood of the Broken! (~10 chapters)
LOOKING FORWARD TO:
Diving in to Act 3 of Blood of the Broken
-
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
Hi there. I'm Lindsey Sparks, author books that include hidden worlds and twisted myths. Welcome to my weekly author's notes podcast. Today is Sunday, April 24th, and I would love to share some of my reflections from this past week with you. Okay. First off, the normal freebies. Currently Echo in Time is free from all ebook retailers. And so is After The Ending, which I don't think I've mentioned this the last few times since After The Ending has been free. After The Ending is written under my old pen name, Lindsey Fairleigh. So you wouldn't find it under Lindsey Sparks. Co-written with Lindsey Pogue. And then, if you are a subscriber to my starter library. You can get most of my series starters, so my first books in series, the eBooks and the audio books for free. So, yeah. And the link for that is in the show notes. Currently, I am a working on Blood of the Broken, still, Atlantis Legacy, book five. I am revising from my skeleton draft to my flesh draft, I am on chapter 25, and I am just about to enter, Act three. So I'm really happy with the progress that I made this week. And yeah, I'll talk a little bit about that later. But I just have to say that I am absolutely loving. Loving this story. This book. The journey that these characters have gone on over the series and especially Cora, the main character, I've just feel like she's grown so much and she's really, like, she's really becoming the person who she needs to be to complete this mission that they're on. But I think with like so many of my stories, the plot is secondary to the character's growth. The character growth is really the story. The story is the character growth, and the plot is like the vehicle that helps them complete that character growth. And so it's just, I'm really loving that Cora is becoming the person who she kind of in my head was always meant to be. And how the kind of pieces are falling in place around her as she is coming into her own. With that is just, has been really fun to see that all happening. And for her to become that person, she has to be, like, completely destroyed. So I'm sorry, Cora. Haha. You're doing great girl. You're doing great. I am reading Crescent City, House of Sky and Breath, the second Crescent City book still. I'm listening to the audio book. I think I'm, I've only, I've got like about a third left of that. It's really, really long. But it's good. And then I'm also still reading Echo in Time for the Read By The Author podcast slash YouTube show. And we just did chapters 25 and 26. I just read before recording this and, whew, that was a steamy, steamy scene. And it was like a longer and steamier than I remembered it. And I had to read it out loud. It was like, wow. All right, past Lindsey. So, which is funny because. It's it's not like the, you know, Song of Scarabs and Fallen Stars was plenty explicit, probably more explicit. I don't know. It's hard to say. Okay. Right now I'm watching Snowfall with my husband still, we just started season two. And I am also finishing up season two of Sanditon, which I believe airs tonight, the final episode, and I'm really excited to see how that wraps up. And I'm also curious to see if this is the final, like. Series finale. Are they going to do a season three? I don't know. So we'll see how they leave things. I like with season one, if you're a Sanditon fan, you would probably know that season one. After season one, the show was canceled and eventually, like, it was revived for season two. So that was very dramatic. So I'm curious to see what happens with that again. Regardless. I love it. I love the season. I love everything about the show. All right. My high this week was that I finished the gallery wall of of nerdy art in my office, which you can just see a piece of it right here. There's a little Buffy art, right there says. Fight like a girl. Maybe I'll just, if I can just move. Without ruining the focus of my webcam. Let's see. Sorry. Here we go. Here it is. Okay. So. YouTube people get to see it. But podcasts people, don't sorry. But you can always check out the YouTube for this episode, if you want to see the wall. All right, so so I am. Yeah. So I finished that. I've been working on that for years. I got most of the art, so some of the art. Art is. Well, the central piece is one of the illustrations from the Kat Dubois original covers. It's the cover for judgment, the illustration for Judgment, which is still on the paperback. And uh, everything else I got at Emerald City Comicon over two years. Probably like five years. Five years ago. Five ish. So. Because it was over two different years. But I don't haven't been back since. Well, obviously COVID. But also I, after those two years, those were the only two years I've gone. I went two years in a row and I, it just completely wipes me out. Like, socially. Like I ended up with a like an introvert hangover. And it takes wiped me out for a couple of weeks and I just kind of get a little bit depressed and. Yeah, maybe, maybe I'll go again, you know, in a few years. But it's just like a lot of people. Yeah, I don't know. But a lot of the art is from that. And um, and then I, so I framed most of it. I ordered all the frames. Measured everything here to order custom frames for everything, because everything's all different sizes. And then I framed it right before my second kid was born in in, not last October, but the one before. So it's been almost a year and a half. Pretty much a year. It has been over a year and a half, I think at this point. Since I framed these things cause I did it like a few days before he was born. And finally, finally, I got everything hung up with em. Basically, I just told, directed and my husband hung everything up. But I'm really happy with how it looks. I want to add more stuff to it, but I have. I want to add. Some of the tarot card illustrations. I I'm gonna want to add, I. I already know. And we'll see how the Illustrated cover this for, for Song of Scarabs and Fallen Stars looks once I get the final back from Alice. Um, I think I'll just be adding constantly adding to this wall. It's going to look really cool. So, That was my high and then my low. Super big bummer. Totally. Bummed me out for like most of yesterday. There is a cover designer, who I reached out to in the morning. Um, I had her in mind for the special editions, the. The Echo Trilogy special editions, 10th anniversary editions that I'm going to be releasing next year. And she's like totally my dream cover designer, her work is gorgeous. Um, and she is not taking any new clients right now. So she is not going to be an option. So I'm going to have to find someone else and I think I've just had like really, really good luck with everything. Anytime I've reached out to people, contract workers, so covered designers or illustrators or anything like that. Narrators. Like all of that stuff. I've had really good luck. Like snagging people who are, like, just amazing, amazing people who I reached out to, with a moonshot and somehow caught them. Um, So I think this is the first one that I have not caught well, that was a miss. So I was like really, really bummed out, but I feel like I'm regrouping I'm I'm on the hunt again. I'm just looking through stuff different. Uh, Cover designers and illustrators and figuring out how exactly I want to. What exactly I want to do for the style. And what I really need to do is make a list of all the design elements that I want to have included. So I know like the breakdown of the people that I need to hire essentially. So interior illustrations throughout the book and the whatever I want to do for the cover design for the book itself, and then the dust jacket cover. The design and the end pages and all that stuff. So I need to figure that out. Last week's obsession was Blood of the Broken, I am so incredibly into this book. Um, I mean, I'm in a romancey part. I. I wrote an initial romance scene on Friday, and I really. struggled with not writing, um, the second romance scene. The followup chapter, and today um, when I woke up early, but I'm really, really putting a lot of effort into not working on the weekends. That said, with the amount of the book that I have left and I would really like to get it done this coming week. I am most likely going to be working next weekend. So, in the mornings waking up to write. So, but hopefully just that one weekend. I like I'm I'm at the point in this story, I've reached the like manic creativity phase, where when I'm writing, I am just like not registering the passage of time and when I'm not writing, I'm still half immersed in this, uh, world and I'm still seeing the scenes play out, like in my mind's eye, and it's just kind of like layered over reality. So, It's a little bit of a weird feeling. When I get into this phase, that it seems to happen. Every single time, right around like end of Act two, switching into Act three when stuff really gets crazy. So I'm just enjoying the ride right now. All right, I did. I'd have a couple of Google search history items. So one was ancient tattoo. So it's a three parter. Ancient tattoos, Viking tattoos, ancient Greek tattoos. So these were the three variations that I used to Google for. like, I don't know how to explain the search term without a hundred percent giving away what's happening. Um, So I'm just going to say that I searched for that, and you're going to like it. The second thing was types. Types of kicks. So this was an interesting search term. That I wanted to mention, because this was actually part of it related. Related to a scene that I hadn't planned on writing. And I had to like switch up something. Because I was like, oh, I feel like there's too many scenes that are. Like. Echoes of each other in this book. And I was like, well, I'm going to do something else with this. Plus this makes more sense. So basically Cora is. Um, Fighting out her emotions. Which is just great. She's just really struggling. And so. So she's in the training room on the Elysium and just like. She's kind of getting the beat crap, getting the crap. Beat out of her, but she is also giving it as good as she's getting it. All right. My big goal last week was to revise seven chapters, um, In Blood of the Broken. I did eight. Yay. It's so rare that I beat my goals. And I actually did it this time. So that was very exciting. And then my goal this week is kind of ridiculous, but we'll see if I can do it. Hopefully I can. To finish this draft. And so I have, um, about 10 chapters left, which is why I'm saying that I'm probably going to need to work Saturday and and Sunday morning. I am. Looking forward to diving into Act three of Blood of the Broken, and just like writing out the remainder of this story. Because it is just a wild, wild ride. And I feel like, so. Much of what has been built up earlier in this series is coming to a head like this book, especially, especially the second half of this book is very much kind of the dark night of the soul. It's like the deepest, deepest depths of despair of the series. Um, And then it is going to be the final springboard for more leading into the final book in the series, which will be book six. Which is Rise of the Revenants. So yeah. I think that's it for me this week. Thank you for listening. and uh, I will be back next week to ramble some more. Until then happy reading!