Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Quiet, down time

The time between book releases always feels to me like it's full of dead space. It shouldn't be. It should be full of frantic, frenzied writing and promotion and surfing the waves of reviews and comments and planning and preparing and ...

*wheeze*

Doesn't that all sound exhausting? XD

Instead, it feels like everyone (including me) is waiting for the Next Big Thing to happen.

So, who am I to let you down?

There is a a giveaway for print copies of Of Shadow Born over on Goodreads. If you are in the US or Canada, feel free to enter. If you get lucky, a book will be winging it's way to you.


Goodreads Book Giveaway

Of Shadow Born by S.L. Gray

Of Shadow Born

by S.L. Gray

Giveaway ends March 31, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

And let me tell you: I opted for the matte finish on the book this time and I'm in love. It's, obviously, not got the shiny, glossy look many of us are used to on our books, but the cover feels almost velvety and my cover artist's work looks even better when you add touch into the mix.

Definitely worth a free entry, doncha think? :)

Hope you all survived St. Patrick's Day and that the week is going well for you. Onward to the weekend!


Monday, March 10, 2014

A weekend of fun.

This past weekend was my birthday. (I am old enough to have finally discovered the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Those of you who get the reference are truly my people.) :)

Rather than spending it doing anything heavy and important, I spent it having fun. The Engineer and I attended the inaugural Comic Con in Sacramento! And, to make it even better, I got to have my picture taken with Billy Dee Williams.

As I have related in various places, when I was little and saw Star Wars, I decided I was going to grow up to play Lando Calrissian's daughter in a future movie. Sadly, that seems unlikely to happen now, but it was a great fantasy for a little kid. So, after some debating over whether at my new-not-so-small age I should still be hanging onto that memory, I decided to go for it and bought my photo ticket.

I am sad to report that I didn't get to relate my childhood dreams to Mr. Williams himself. They rushed us through the pictures so quickly that I'm kind of surprised the image isn't simply a blur. It's actually not a bad picture, though, so when I have the digital copy I'll probably share. Until then, I'll say I'm glad I did it.

But what was even more fun was doing cosplay.

My current (well, only) cosplay is Zoe Washburne from Firefly. I love the character and the actress, and hey, if you squint, I sort of fit the part. :) So I dressed, because how better to celebrate getting older than by playing dress up?

And I had a blast. Apparently, standing out at the Big, Official Comic Con in San Diego is hard to do. When I cosplayed Zoe down there last summer, I barely got any notice at all. Here? I got stopped for pictures so many times. People had conversations with me about Firefly. They lamented the single season. They complimented me. I felt awesome and I didn't mind posing with anyone.

So will Zoe make more appearances? Yeah. Probably. :) Will she be back next year? Well. Yeah. Probably. :) I hope to have another costume (or two) ready to go by then but I think Zoe's my default.

Coz I kind of like feeling like a Big Damn Hero, you know?

----

I have to put a plug in for my books here. They're both still available, though the promotional sales are over. Thank you so much to everyone who bought books while those were going on, or bought books at all. And if you're still thinking about it, no pressure. They're not going to go off sale. :)

I did promise that there'd be a new review coming on Twitter, and indeed, it exists. It's for Immortal Lies and it thrills me. You can check it out on Electively Paige's blog. There's a giveaway for a couple of electronic copies on her site, or, you can buy either one (or both) of my books on Amazon, BN, Kobo or Smashwords. More sites to come.

Happy Monday!

Monday, March 3, 2014

Reading words before writing them.

Hey all, happy (rainy) Monday!

Having successfully released another book into the wild, I decided to take some time to relax and do some reading before diving deep into the next project. Call it a palate cleanser if you will, or giving myself time to refill the creative well. You can even just call it self-indulgent do-nothinging and I'd be good with all of that. Sometimes you just have to curl up and read.

So I've been reading, and ticking off some of my TBRs for reading challenges I signed up for at the beginning of the year. I'm happy to say that I haven't found anything that made me want to weep for wasted time thus far. Some of my reads have been more enjoyable than others, but that's to be expected, right? Fortuantely, I've trained myself out of the need to read to the very end of a book regardless of whether I like it or not. Too little time to do that if I plan to read through my entire TBR mountain range before I die or my eyesight burns out.

So that's where I've been. Reading. Well. And hanging out with my faire guildmates. Faire season is gearing up, which means fabric shopping and character development and planning all sorts of mischief. If you're in California or planning to visit during the season this year, maybe I'll see you in one of my other guises.

As I am an author first and foremost, though, the books and writing come first. To that end:

I planned to set the price on Of Shadow Born to it's regular price today. However, I forgot that Smashwords is having it's annual Read an Ebook promotion this week. What does this mean for you? Of Shadow Born stays at the lower price until Saturday, March 8th.

If you're interested and you haven't picked it up yet, grab a copy now (and use code: REW75 at checkout to get the discount)!