Elf Queen 3 Weekly Update! 3/5

Well, well, well, another week has come and gone. I feel like I just wrote the last weekly update and here we are again. It’s weird how some days and weeks seem to drag on forever and others fly by. As a kid I remember feeling like the days were endless, especially at school. From Monday to Friday was slow torture and a month?

Now I’m like where did the time go! It feels like I just released Bow Before the Elf Queen and that was April 26th 2022. We’re almost at the 1 year anniversary! That’s so crazy to me.

Anyway, the Bookish Box edition is out! Someone tagged me in a post on Instagram. I’m SO excited. It’s one of those surreal things like wow I can’t believe my book is popular enough to be a special edition with a book company. And it’s so pretty!

I’m a little miffed I don’t even have a copy of it yet. I approved the artwork on it but that’s different than seeing it finished and in person. If you have your copy, post it for me to see!

I felt like I was being a bit of a diva with the artwork. I did not like the original artist they chose. Every piece they sent me was just (in my opinion) ugly. The idea was ok but the execution and style was not. I felt bad saying I didn’t like it, but this book is my baby and the original cover is so pretty, it had to at least rival it, not be a downgrade. So we decided on a new artist and I love the style we ended up with much more.

Alright I have a couple new sweatshirt/T shirt ideas I posted. I could also make these designs into stickers too! If you love the designs let me know! Various colors would be available.

Elf Queen 3 book update

I enjoyed this writing week. I’m so deeply in love with this story and these characters. I teared up, and laughed, and omg you all are going to love it as much as me I hope. I’m at just over 106k words. Last week I ended with 87k, so I wrote almost 20k words! I was in the flow and everything came easily.

No sneak peeks this time. I’m being careful on how much I show you as I don’t want to give much away. I want you to go into this book blind with excitement and mystery.

If you need some book recs on what to read while you’re waiting for my next Elf Queen book check out, Olivia Wildstein’s House of Beating Wings and LJ Andrews A Curse of Shadows and Thorns. They align with my genre and I think you’d enjoy them.

Also I have my other series, RISE and the Allied Kingdoms Academy. Both high fantasy with romance!

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To Spice or Not to Spice.

I got a ton of feedback from you all last week about steam/spice, genre expectations and how some feel like there’s too much smut nowadays and others can’t get enough. Both opinions are valid! And all of you matter. I’m likely going to continue to write the way I have been, with on page steam but more in the poetic vague sense, but I’m still considering adding bonus scenes with more explicit details. Perhaps even special edition paperbacks with the spicy bonus scenes. This is something I would probably do for like a Patreon or Kickstarter.

I hope you’re all doing well and have a great week ahead!

JM