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After feeling like my authorial career is stalled (largely because I haven't written any fiction to speak of since the beginning of the pandemic), the stars are aligning to give me a boost.

First off: in less than 2 weeks, The Language of Roses is being released. YAY! In addition to trying to keep up with the correspondence for various promo things (I feel so behind), I've been having fun posting daily pictures of my book promo card next to roses from my yard, with quotes from the book and other things. It's very hard to know how things are going at the point. It's too early for significant reviews to be coming in, and I can't tell whether the bubble of awareness that surrounds me on social media is just a bubble or an aura of larger awareness. At least I have a publisher who's doing serious SFF promotion this time. If you're a fan of my writing and planning to read Roses, I hope you'll seriously consider leaving reviews in strategic places (or at least telling other people if you love it). For an author in my position, word of mouth is the strongest thing we have going, unless by some miracle a high-profile reviewer decides to give it a boost.

And in addition to that, there's a release date up at Tantor Media for the audiobook of Daughter of Mystery. So if you've been longing for an Alpennia audiobook, keep your eyes peeled for announcements come June. (They have a page for the book, but no preorder links yet, so I haven't been bothering to link the page.) I certainly hope that the whole series will get audiobooks, but that will depend on how well the first one does.

Interestingly, I've found myself strongly pivoting to audiobooks for fiction lately. Not to much for the items on my to-read list (although some of them), but treating it as an opportunity to try some authors that I was having a hard time justifying using my page-time for. (Look, I have complicated reading priorities.) As a result, I've been binging K.J. Charles romances, and Shelly Thomas's Lady Sherlock mystery series, as well as taking in some of the longer works from my SFF to-reads, like Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne.