Category: Updates

Writing progress with snow and moose

Also posted at the Facebook group, I made myself this cute progress chart to keep track of where I am in all my various projects for current pen names.

I’m cycling back and forth between my different pen names for the first half of 2022. Right now I’m working on Metal Gladiator while noodling over some of the finer plot points in Keeley #5, and then I’ll switch back to that in February and aim for getting it off to my betas.

I looked out the window just now and the snow was coming down in astonishing thick flakes. It really shows up against the wall of the shop.

We’ve also had some moose hanging around the last few days. You can see SEVEN at once in this astonishing video taken by my husband as he was trying to get to work a couple of days ago!

The one that’s been mainly hanging around the yard lately is a yearling calf. It was out there again today.

I like seeing them around … from a distance!

A cold and wild world

Winter is the deep freeze, and it’s been around -30F since before Christmas with few breaks, dipping as low as -60 or colder in parts of Interior Alaska (the cold bit — the coasts are typically much warmer). But that’s what it does here, and in a way it’s a relief, with the warming Arctic and all that goes along with it, to have a halfway normal winter for a change.

I’ve just done a much-needed site update, cleaning out old links and making sure the Books, Short Stories, and Shows pages are up to date. (Aside from Alaska Comicon, where I’ve already reserved a table, the shows later in the year are still very much TBD, but these are the ones I’ve done in the past.) I also did a big update on my Lauren Esker website.

I really haven’t had much that’s new lately, aside from writing under the Lauren Esker and Zoe Chant pen names and Sun-Cutter‘s ongoing progress, but there are big plans afoot for 2020. I’m planning to reboot the Gatekeeper series (currently writing the last book in the trilogy) and I have another series as well, a historical series of steampunk murder mysteries set in the 1930s. I’ll have more information on both of those and a publishing schedule for the year to come soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy another glimpse of our frozen world.

March is the cruelest month

Especially this year. Throughout February it snew and snew, and then snew some more, and now … look at it out there. ;__; I mean, it’s beautiful, BUT. This is the time of year when it feels as if winter will never end. (This picture is from a couple of days ago, when it was sunny. Today it was snowing again. AARGH.)

It doesn’t help that I was sick for half of February, so I’m behind on everything.

But I’m digging myself out from under a to-do pile. I’ve finally got the website redesigned for a newer, cleaner, more mobile-responsive look. There’s now a proper blog again (I want to start posting some free fiction here), the Short Stories page has been restored after being eliminated in the last redesign, the Start Here page has been updated with all my current projects, and the Books page has been updated with a bunch of new stuff. I’ve added a page for 2018 shows (such as they are).

And the snow will melt, and spring will come! It’s just going to be a month or so before we see any proper progress on that …

September at Icefall Studio

Somehow autumn seems to have crept up on us. The air has that fresh crisp smell (and underlying chilly bite), the trees are turning colors, the farmer’s market and summer food trucks are in their final weeks if they haven’t closed down already … how does it come at the same time every year, and yet seems to come out of nowhere when it does?

At least this year I have an excuse. I spent two and a half weeks of August in England for a friend’s wedding and general touristing, which was lovely.

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August state-of-the-studio

Well, the big news for July is that I had my 40th birthday. I’ve never really marked a birthday milestone before; 18 and 21 came with new rights and responsibilities, but I didn’t really do anything. And 30 never made much of an impression on me. But for some reason, 40 felt like a big one, and I wanted to do something to commemorate the occasion.

I ended up spending it in Homer with my mom. It was a lovely vacation; we rented a nice little cabin in the hills, from Wild Rose Cottages:

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July Update

Hello! It’s July here at Icefall Studio, and I have a newly redesigned and mobile-responsive website, a brand new Facebook page, and along with these things, a renewed sense of energy and purpose for updating them in a timely fashion.

It happened that the website crash and redesign occurred almost exactly on the summer solstice (within a few days of it, at least). I can’t think of a better time for starting a new venture, especially here in Alaska, with our 24/7 daylight and the corresponding sense of energy and industry that goes along with it. It also has special significance for me as my wedding anniversary (16 years this June 20th!). So this is a good month to get back into the swing of regular blogging.

What’s going on around the studio this July?

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