 To be human is to deal with stress and my international move to Portugal certainly red-lined that meter in so many ways. Today's post on Janice Hardy's Fiction University explains how all that changed my approach to writing, how I'm coping with that abrupt change, and why it's all very positive. Enjoy!
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 The winter is always a slower time for me. It's like I'm part bear and like to hibernate, though I don't actually sleep any more hours than in the summer. I suspect many of you are exactly the same. I find I like nothing more than curling up with a good book, a cup of tea and a purring cat. Everything else seems like too much bother.
 If you check out the blog post archives listed to the right of this post you will note a HUUUUGE gap between December 2016 to August 2018. A lot of that silence is because of THE MOVE in September 2017, which required ten months' worth of prep time to accomplish. I've mentioned THE MOVE on Facebook and elsewhere but never really addressed it on my blog. So here goes!
I put those words in caps because any move is likely to wear you down. All the logistics, the hassles, the unforeseen near-disasters are totally mind blowing and exhausting. Add in selling, tossing or donating 99% of your earthly possessions and moving across the Atlanta Ocean to a foreign country -- that's Olympic level hell right there. And we did it to ourselves with no one else to blame. LOL  First of all -- HAPPY NEW YEAR! Wherein I learned that I didn't need to go out onto the streets of Porto to see the massive fireworks display downtown, but could see it just fine from our apartment. Yeah, color me surprised.
 I've been a bit quiet because after my trip to the United States I was home for a couple weeks and then off to London. This, too, was a business trip, but like the one in the US, much fun as well. Because I was hanging around with . . . Ripperologists.
As promised here is the entire self-publishing presentation I gave today at Moonlight & Magnolias. I figured it'd just be easier to give you the whole works.
self_publishing_mm_2018.pdf  Later this week I'll be hopping a plane to Atlanta to attend the Moonlight and Magnolias Conference hosted by the Georgia Romance Writers. These are my peeps and it'll be great fun to catch up with them. The Craft Speaker for the conference is none other than Mollie Traver who has served as editor for a number of my Demon Trappers books as well as my Chandler Steele series. I haven't see Mollie since 2012 and I hope to take her on a private, guided tour of all the Demon Trappers' sites in Atlanta, including Oakland Cemetery. Since the poor lady had to fight her way through all that prose she might as well see where those scenes were set.
I'll be taking part in the (free admission, open to the pubic) booksigning on Saturday so if you want to chat, or an autographed copy of VALIANT LIGHT, come find me! I'll try to post an update while I'm in Atlanta. I know I'm going to roast -- the humidity is 90%+ (it's in the 30s and 40s here in Porto) so air conditioning will be my friend. I will definitely be posting updates on Facebook so be sure to check there for any interesting news. Later, folks!  We were due for new credit cards and when the credit card company notified us they’d mailed them to Portugal, I made a note of the date. When we hit the three week time frame I figured they’d wandered off to who knows where so I contacted the company with the news. As I anticipated, they promptly cancelled the account and they sent new cards to a secure address in the US so I can pick them up in October.
Wanna guess what showed up the day after I contacted them? The ‘missing’ cards. Shoulda made it 3 weeks and one day, it appears.  DragonCon 2018 has begun and I'm actually missing this massive event more than I'd expected. This is where 85K of your closest nerd friends gather for five days in downtown Atlanta. Besides a glorious parade, there are costumes, costume mashups (like the mind-boggling one above), zillions of programming tracks and AUTHORS. Yes, in the wild. Real ones. You can talk to them, even.
If you're not in Atlanta (like me), the easiest way to track the fun without sore feet is searching for the hashtag #Dragon2018 on either Twitter or Facebook. Or watching the official DragonCon page (again on FB). The pictures are always incredible so that's what I'll be doing while missing Atlanta and my peeps.  I admit it -- I've known for years I needed to update my website from its original design. I was totally in love with the kickass graphics created by none other than Ilona Andrews (fabulous urban fantasy author).
But after a while all things need a change. Of course, I kept procrastinating -- there were books to write -- and it never got done. Until now. So here's my new Jana Oliver site, complete with info on all the books plus a section for my alter-ego Chandler Steele. And I promise to post more often than once every (checks sidebar) two years 0-o. Welcome! |
Jana OliverJana is an international & multi-award winning author in several genres including young adult, paranormal romance and urban fantasy. Archives
June 2019
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